


Move the Chains

by queenlua



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4047886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenlua/pseuds/queenlua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian said he'd change Tevinter, said he'd change everything—but he's still lingering at Skyhold.</p><p>The Magisterium turns its eye toward him. An assassin moves against him. And Leliana has a plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set after the end of DA:I itself, and thus diverges from the narrative laid out in the DLCs.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy~

When Magister Tilani stood on the senate floor and moved to nominate Dorian Pavus for a seat in the Magisterium, just one month after Corypheus's defeat at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, the ensuing debate was so heated as to nearly come to blows. Nearly all of the dissent and quarreling in Tevinter happened behind closed doors, and sessions of the senate were dull, previously-agreed-upon affairs—so when a public session actually managed to stir a discussion _at all_ , it was news.

And as for _this_ session? Magister Sidonia had called Magister Valroy a callow, talentless hack to his face. Two magisters pulled out staves and threatened to duel, until some magisters with better sense pulled them apart. Accusations and denials of former Venatori affiliation were flung across the chamber like so many arrows. _That_ was more than just news—soon as the session adjourned, tongues were set flapping all across Minrathous, and word of the audacious meeting traveled across Thedas like wildfire.

Of course, Sister Leliana's ravens traveled faster than any fire.

When she informed Dorian of the news, he puffed up like a peacock. "Magister Tilani has remarkable nerve, I'll give her that. I always did like that woman." He rummaged through a nearby shelf, pulling out a cloak and shrugging it over his shoulders. "Red's quite the fetching color on me, don't you think? Like the magister-robes. Though, I always thought the _trim_ on those things were hopelessly tacky, I wonder if I could have them altered…"

Dorian smiled broadly. Leliana didn't smile back. "You may wish to see this as well," she said, proffering a small bundle of parchment.

"Mm, what's that?"

"Some correspondence my agent intercepted between a few magisters, shortly after the session convened. They worry that you are both too popular and too radical. Several of them are entertaining threats on your life."

Dorian rolled his eyes. " _Please._ Let's see here." He took the parchment, scanning through—all the usual suspects, and a few new names as well. "Of course Ponticus would say that, he loathed my family even _before_ I dragged our fair name into disgrace—and it's cute when Iravus says things like this, as though anyone thinks his opinion actually matters. How he ever got his seat, I'll never understand." He handed the papers back to Leliana. "Rather toothless, I think. What a lovely fuss they're making, though."

"Then will you be returning to Tevinter?" Leliana asked, her tone carefully neutral—but her eyes belied her interest.

Dorian laughed at that—but not so boisterously as usual; this laugh had an edge to it. "Going? Hardly. Not yet, anyway. Let's keep them wondering. More fun that way."

Leliana arched one cool eyebrow but said nothing. The following week, more ravens poured in—magisters and altuses of every stripe, inquiring after Dorian's intentions, inviting him home or warning him away, and more reports from Leliana's agents. She passed them all along to Dorian, but Dorian scarcely looked at them. Busy on Inquisition business, he claimed.

And a week after that—that's when the dreams started.

* * *

The first night, it was a simple nightmare. He woke, gasping, in the darkness, and it took a long minute for him to slow his breathing again, to release the vicegrip he had on his pillow.

Dorian hadn't had something so mundane as a _nightmare_ since he was an apprentice, too inexperienced to properly control the shape of his dreams, his time in the Fade. And it was odd for him to have so much trouble remembering a dream. He snatched at the fragments in his mind, but they all slipped away: a familiar face he couldn't quite name, a Circle he'd been to long ago, a strangely-colored bird.

Odd, very odd. But it _had_ been quite a few weeks. Saving the world and all the aftermath that entailed. Probably he'd just been run more ragged than he'd thought. He shrugged it off.

The next night there wasn't any nightmare, but his dream was—off. Just a bit off, some small things tweaked, things a lesser mage might not have noticed at all—etched motifs of the Tevinter heraldry in decidedly non-Tevinter buildings, an odd tilt to the floor. The sort of details that mere demons didn't tend to tweak. But Dorian shrugged at that, too—the Fade was strange in the best of circumstances, so what was just a little more strangeness?

Then: another nightmare. Dorian couldn't remember how or why he came to the Grand Plaza in Minrathous—rather, the fade-touched version of it—or who the bright-eyed hooded mage was, how they met, why they were fighting, why were they fighting? Dorian raised his hands in defense, but the mana wouldn't come to him, and his feet were too sluggish to move. The bright-eyed mage threw a blast of ice and he was freezing, freezing—

And he woke. He woke, shuddering, as if from cold, though he was still underneath three layers of blankets. He blinked slowly as awareness crept back to him, but still felt so _cold_ —the blast had struck his hands first—he pulled his left hand toward his face, squinting to see by the dim torchlight.

And his hand was _coated_ , coated in little flakes of ice crystal. The crystals were melting fast onto the bed sheets, but the edges were still distinct.

That— _that_ should not be possible.

Dorian felt a second chill seize him, though this chill came from within. Of course Dorian had _heard_ of Dreamers, he was _descended_ from Dreamers, he knew the _theory_. But the sort of Dreamer who could reach _past_ the fade? who could touch the physical realm, even so slightly? There hadn't been a mage like that for—well, a century at least, maybe longer.

At least, not one that anyone knew about.

Dorian didn't fall asleep again that night.

* * *

Seeing Dorian awake before noon was enough to give anyone pause; seeing him awake before _dawn_ was enough to halt Leliana in her steps entirely. She'd been on her way to the war room when she caught sight of the mage, hunched in a corner of the library, a wild scatter of papers before him and a deep furrow on his brow. More striking than the hour, even, were the papers themselves—looking more closely, she saw that they were the letters from Tevinter, the letters he'd been letting pile up, ignored, for weeks.

"Anything of interest?" she asked, with forced casualness.

Dorian blinked—he hadn't noticed Leliana was there—but then plucked a letter from the table and announced in a breezy tone: "An old classmate of mine made Senior Enchanter while I was away. Brielle Bellarous. Nearly as brilliant as me, without even an ounce of the manners; apparently she's caused quite a fuss by accusing one of the Prandreo boys of using blood magic. She's right, of course, but it'll be most interesting to see whether her rank holds over his family's considerable piles of gold and influence."

"Ah." Leliana paused, waiting for more. "By 'interesting', I rather meant—"

"Right. That was the _pleasant_ bit of interest," Dorian said, sighing. "The unpleasant bits of interest are sorted by their type." He gestured to each pile of letters in turn: "Suspicious invitations to remote estates _just_ outside the Inquistion's proper area of influence. Letters politely dissuading me from trying for a seat in the Magisterium. Letters _im_ politely dissuading me from aforementioned seat. Several concerned friends wondering at my intention to return, a few rather _shady_ enchanters asking that I lend my power to theirs, and one rather frighteningly neutral letter from the Archon himself." He pressed a hand against his temple. "I rather envy the Fereldens, at times like these. With them, at least, finding the man who's trying to kill you is as simple as looking for whoever's holding a sword."

One letter remained curiously unopened. Leliana's eyes went to it instinctively—then she noticed the seal on it. House Pavus.

She looked back to Dorian, and placed a hand on one of the larger piles. "Might I examine these? My agents may have some use for them."

Dorian blinked and stared. Perhaps she was being too intrusive. But after a moment, he laughed. "Certainly, certainly. I'd rather expected you'd steamed them open already, to be honest; what a polite spymaster you are."

Leliana smiled at that. Some of them she _had_ steamed open, of course. The rest had simply seemed easier to ask for.

* * *

When Dorian went to the Skyhold alchemist, Elan, asking for what should have been a perfectly _mundane_ potion, he had to repeat himself three times: "Draught of Dreamless Sleep."

The elf wrinkled her nose and frowned.

Dorian sighed. "Do you have any? You've _heard_ of it, yes?"

"I haven't ever heard of something called that, no. Is it anything like the sleeping potions we keep back there? Made with elfroot and dawn lotus?"

_Southerners._ Dorian bit his tongue on a cutting remark, since it wasn't poor Elan's fault that alchemical education was so hopelessly lacking here in the south, but _really_ , this sort of potion was something even a middling Circle alchemist knew how to make, back home. "It's an old Tevinter brew," he explained. "I might, hm, I've got a text in my belongings that should have the process outlined, if you could go off of that?"

Elan nodded slowly. "Sure. Send it my way and I'll see what I can do."

_See what I can do._ Really, just the reassurance Dorian needed.

He found the old text, eventually, after an hour's searching and scouring and coughing from dust. He certainly wasn't an alchemist himself, but once he had the book, he turned to the recipe and went over it with red pen, double-underlining all the tricky bits and adding exclamation points for emphasis. Wouldn't do the have her bungling the recipe on top of all this other mess.

* * *

Elan told him it would take her a week to brew the draught. No matter; alcohol worked for killing fade-dreams almost as well as any potion. Or. Well, no, not nearly as well as a potion, but it at least made him feel less anxious about _not_ having the potion, and it wasn't like Dorian wandering about with drink in hand was an unusual sight around Skyhold.

He was milling about in the main hall when Cullen came by, his face darkened and his stride all bluster and fluster. Dorian cast a glance toward the dungeon's entrance—from what he'd overheard earlier in the day, the commander must be on his way to see that ward-slash-prisoner of his, that Samson fellow. Somehow, the old templar still clung to life, despite both the death of his former master _and_ all that ghastly red lyrium business. Dorian couldn't imagine what use the Inquisition was getting out of the man, at this point. By the look on Cullen's face, he supposed that Cullen didn't know, either.

"Off to see your little charge?" Dorian called, teasing—hardly the first time he'd teased the commander, he made it too _easy_ —except, instead of just shrugging it off, or smirking and going on his way, as he usually would, Cullen planted his feet and turned to glare at Dorian, shoulders pulled tight, the sort of glare Cullen generally reserved for particularly meddlesome recruits. "Something to say, Dorian?"

"Nothing, nothing at all," he demurred. But then, because he never knew when to stop: "Might not want to let that Samson fellow see your face like that, though."

"Might not want to…" Cullen shook his head, and dismissed Dorian with an exasperated wave of his hand. He went on to the dungeons, and as he went, he slammed the door so hard behind him that Dorian nearly dropped his flask.

"Touchy," Dorian muttered, wiping off a bit of the brandy he'd spilled. Maybe he should've offered the commander a bit of drink. Take the edge right off.

* * *

The edges are hazy but the warmth is real, too real, like he's had too much to drink. Probably he _has_ had too much to drink; that's why he's sprawled on this bed, why his head feels so heavy. There's a dull roar downstairs—Dorian Pavus, skipping out on the party early, the guests must be so disappointed—and the air smells thick, like lyrium, like—like the smell of the Fade.

The Fade. Where he is, right now. Dreaming. He'd forgotten for a moment. Why had he forgotten?

A shape enters the room. He knows this room. From where? The bed is so soft beneath him, soft Antivan velvet on a thick plush mattress, he could sink into it forever—is sinking—no. He pulls himself up, presses his back against the headboard. How did I get here? he asks himself. He can't remember, he can't remember because he's in the Fade, and something's off, it shouldn't be this hard to _move_ —

He turns to the shape again, the shape in the doorway, gliding toward him now. The shape has a form, then a figure, then a face—and the name startles out of him like a bird, how many years has it been since he last saw that face: _"Rilienus."_ And it's a trick, Dorian knows it's a trick, but for a half-second he's too startled to move, and it's in that half-second the dagger flashes.

Dorian shouts and scrambles back. His feet get tangled in the blankets and the swipe misses him by a narrow inch. He half-tumbles off the bed, throws his hands in front of him, shouts something arcane—fire leaps out, but the figure shrugs and the fire rolls off him—

Dorian knocks the figure back with a quarterstaff, a quarterstaff he's just conjured. He can shape the Fade, too. Maybe not as well as this, this… this _thing_. But enough. Dorian rushes for the door—but it's locked. Slams into it, blasts fire at it, nothing. The thing's getting up and, oh, not good, not good.

"Wake up," he hisses to himself. The figure lunges again, Dorian dodges, but it's stronger and Dorian can't keep jumping away forever. So all he's got is the frantic thought, over and over, _wake up wake up wakeupwakeup_ —

—and he wakes, gasping.

The shock of it _feels_ like being stabbed, the damned night-air is so cold and the waking so sudden. He's clutching the bedsheets, clutches them tighter, lifts his head a few inches but everything still feels so _heavy_. Slowly, painstakingly, he pulls himself upright, starts pooling his mana around him. His eyes jump from the door, to the walls, to the ceiling, watching for movement, watching for shadows, watching for anything, ready to strike.

The Inquisition flag in the corner is the thing that convinces him he's back in Skyhold. Safe. For now, at least. Probably. He lets out a long sigh, and lets himself fall back.

Dorian knows demons. Demons talk, they wheedle, they plead and tempt and lure. But that—that was no demon.

A miss. A very near miss.

His body is aching for sleep, but he can't let it. Not now. With a groan, he forces himself out of bed and into the halls, staring hard at the shadows as he passes by.

* * *

In the predawn hush, throughout the stark towers of Skyhold, the only moving thing was Leliana.

This precious hour was the only time in her day she spent truly alone, and she always spent it the same way. As she crept up the old wooden stairs to the rookery, the steps creaking beneath her, she could hear the low answering croaks from her ravens, trained by experience to waken at her slight steps. She heard them shaking their feathers out, heard their little feet click-clacking, well before she turned the last staircase-spiral to see them.

And there—someone new.

She nearly jumped at the sight; no one had _ever_ been here in the morning before her. The man was turned away from her, but the outline was unmistakable—Dorian, slumped against a post, his hair mussed into an ignoble snarl. She stared for a moment. No movement. Asleep on his feet, perhaps?

She watched a moment longer, before venturing, "Dorian?" Then, more loudly: "Dorian?"

He started at that—yes, he'd been sleeping—and he jerked his head around, blinking dazedly. She waited, patient, as he took in his surroundings, but when he finally saw her, he managed a broad, groggy grin. "Leliana, my dear. Just the lady I was hoping to run into."

Leliana quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"I've got a bit of a problem, I'm afraid," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Those magisters who want me dead? Seems as though one of them has the gall to actually _do_ something about it. I went through the papers you gave me, and a letter from an old friend in Minrathous, and—"

"Magister Valerius."

Leliana smiled at Dorian's baffled expression. "I, uh, yes. Him."

"I'd already made a note of his interest," she explained. "My agents apprehended an assassin of his near the Orlesian border."

"Really, now." Dorian fidgeted and glanced to the side. "Ah—what _sort_ of assassin, if you don't mind my asking—the stabby-blades sort, or the mage-with-mysterious-powers sort? Or some exciting new variety I hadn't thought of?"

Leliana stared at Dorian for a long moment. He wouldn't quite meet her eyes. "Blades," she said finally. "What's this about?"

"It's… nevermind. Just, I don't think that's the only one Valerius sent after me, and the other might not be so easy to apprehend, you see—"

"Would you like me to have Magister Valerius himself taken care of?"

_Taken care of._ How delicately put. Dorian considered a moment. He wasn't fond of entering into all that assassination business; it was a bit to Tevene, even for him. But he remembered the dream, that very near miss, and felt a slight shudder.

"Please," he said at last. "And quickly, if you could. I'd rather like to sleep at night."

Leliana nodded, and brushed past Dorian, toward her ravens. She picked up a bucket of grain and began pouring it into the ravens' feeding-bin, just as she did every other morning. Dorian nodded, as if to himself, and moved to leave—but then, Leliana sighed and set the bucket down. "I suspect Valerius is not the only one among your enemies willing to resort to such means," she called to his back. "I could look into the matter, if you like."

_Look into the matter._ Dorian laughed, turning to face her. "Fun as that sounds, Sister, if I discredit or kill every backstabber or blood mage in the Magisterium, there shan't be anyone left to handle matters of state. Who would dictate the lyrium tariffs, or decide on the color scheme for the next Grand Ball?" He gave a disapproving cluck of his tongue. "Anarchy."

"Perhaps that would not be unwelcome," Leliana countered, an edge creeping into her voice. "You _do_ wish to see change in Tevinter, yes?"

The way the words curled around Leliana's lips, cold and hard—they sounded too close to an accusation. Dorian hadn't heard that tone from Leliana before, removed as he was from all those messy war table chats, from those hushed meetings with her agents—but it reminded him of what he'd seen of her in the future-that-never-was.

Leliana gazed back at him—despite the harsh words, she remained utterly unassuming, one hand folded over the other, that modest Chantry hood hiding her hair. But watch her hand turn, and fate turned with it. Andraste bless, this was the lady who was nearly named Divine.

"Things back home are… delicate," Dorian muttered, dropping his gaze to the ground.

"I have delicate hands."

"What's your interest here, anyway? Tevinter's no business of yours."

"My interest is the good of the Inquisition, of course," she said. Most of the truth. Part of the truth. "The Ventatori are in retreat now, and largely discredited—but I must keep an eye on things. And," she added with a smile, "you _did_ come to me, Altus."

"Right." Dorian reached a hand to the back of his neck, fidgeting. "Look into it, if you would—but don't do any, ah, alterations of the course of Tevinter politics without consulting me first, if you don't mind. It's… it's delicate."

"As you wish," Leliana said, and turned back to her ravens, a soft sort of dismissal. Dorian lingered a bit before departing, trying to read something in that inscrutable expression of hers. Why did her little smile make him feel so uneasy?

* * *

As dusk fell, outside the stark walls of Skyhold, the mage stood alone.

Four layers of clothes on and she _still_ felt the cold. She didn't care _how_ many times that merchant had told her that cold was _nothing_ so long as she had the right preparations. She had furs and the best boots money could buy and she _still_ felt the cold, felt it at her core, the kind of cold that seeped under her skin and made her breath soggy.

For the fiftieth time, she wondered why anyone lived in the Andraste-forsaken south. And for the fiftieth time, she wondered if Valerius really wanted _her_ dead, instead of Pavus. The task certainly _seemed_ suicidal enough. She'd been evading the Inquisition's patrols by skulking around in a handful of obscure caves, on the edge of the territory, but that wouldn't last forever. Already, there had been some close calls—a scrap of dried meat she'd dropped had had scouts combing the area for hours. This Inquisition, whatever else it was, was certainly alert.

The last patrol had passed by a half hour ago, and there was no sign of them returning. She sighed, and turned back toward the little cave she'd scouted for herself in the pale cliffside. Sleeping made her vulnerable, but she couldn't finish the job without sleeping.

She wasn't particularly Andrastian, but she whispered a little prayer to herself just the same: _let me find him tonight_.

And she slept, and as she slept, she dreamed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [CherryMilkshake](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryMilkshake/pseuds/CherryMilkshake) for betaing this chapter.
> 
> As always, comments/critiques/etc are very welcome.

Elan couldn't brew the draught any faster than she already was, and Leliana couldn't make Valerius dead any faster than her crows could fly, and Dorian couldn't find useful defenses against Dreamers in any book in the library, no matter how hard he looked. Which left him with his only option: just stop sleeping.

Easier said than done, of course. The first two days weren't _too_ awful. He'd done his share of sleepless nights during his studies, when a particularly promising avenue of research opened up, and he'd lost track of time. Or, of course, when he'd been working on the time-magic with Alexius—nevermind how it turned out in the end, nevermind how Alexius's determination had turned to desperation, into talk of blood magic and worse. Before all that, their research had been a thrill. A desperate thrill—it was impossible to forget that Felix's life was on the line, that his condition worsened by the day—but a thrill nonetheless.

The pair of them had always been complementary talents, Alexius's experience and caution reining in Dorian's wilder notions, and lending support to Dorian's better flashes of insight. They'd pushed through all the familiar time-related territory in a week; mere days after that, they were constructing spells that not even the famed time-scholar Christenden had touched on in his ten volumes on the topic. When they managed the spell that finally slowed the spread of the taint within Felix, that finally gave the boy more time, and lessened his pain—they'd finished their work just as the sun was rising, and they could hardly believe it themselves, and Dorian had been giddy at the victory. Shame that he'd never gone back to Minrathous after that; how he would've loved to crow about his findings at the circle there, probably would've had that Brielle girl seething with jealousy—

But it hadn't turned out that way, of course.

The memory of his old mentor only stung a little, as he gathered his books and holed himself up in the library for this session of marathon studying.

But the only worthwhile topic he could think of to research—Dreamers and Dreaming and all the magic that came with it—didn't make for particularly scintillating scholarship. Mostly, it consisted of hunting down obscure references to Dreamers who may or may not have even existed, and puzzling over the corresponding texts, written in a dozen different ancient and obscure dialects of Tevene. Languages had _never_ been his strong suit, and trying to manage them while on his twelfth cup of coffee was only slightly preferable to stabbing his skull with an ice pick. He thought he could make it to the second sunrise, at least—but instead, he woke up at three in the afternoon, slouched over his desk, face-first in a book, with some passerby sniggering at him as he startled back into awareness.

No dream-attack had happened, thankfully. But he'd ruined a perfectly good volume of one of Sister Petrine's histories with his slobber. Pity.

At that point, he began to consider enlisting help. Cullen came to mind—sensible, responsible, not given to prying. But when Dorian thought of trying to explain the presence of a mysterious and powerful dream-assassin lurking in the Fade, he imagined the commander translating that to _demons! demonic possession! danger!_ and getting all… templar-y about it. No, that wouldn't do at all.

Not that the mages in Skyhold would be much better. An insufferably curious bunch, the lot of them; there would be no end to the questions and "helpful" suggestions that only someone trained in a harebrained southern circle would come up with.

Really, he needed someone who was given to straightforward solutions, and didn't ask too many questions.

So.

"Bull."

The qunari was lounging in the tavern when Dorian found him, holding a pint of that horrid-smelling ale that had sent some poor recruit straight to the healer last week. He tilted his head toward the mage: "Yeah?"

Dorian took a seat next to the Iron Bull, waved the barkeep away, cleared his throat, and looked him right in the eyes. "This will sound strange. But. I'm trying to not sleep, for rather tiresome and complicated mage-related reasons. I am planning to spend the rest of the night here. If you see me fall asleep, I would like you to punch me until I wake up."

For a moment, Bull just stared at him, like he didn't quite understand. Dorian sighed, preparing to explain it again, using even simpler words—but then a smile cracked on Bull's face, and he laughed so loudly that others started to stare. "You serious, Vint?"

"Quite."

"This isn't some sort of weird Tevinter foreplay, is it? Because I've got better ideas—"

"Bull, _please,_ " Dorian said, through gritted teeth. He'd resisted Iron Bull's none-too-subtle invitations so far—though, given how frustrated and tired and annoyed he was, the idea of blowing off some steam honestly didn't sound too awful right about now—oh he was not _nearly_ drunk enough to be entertaining this line of thought, the lack of sleep was clearly getting to him—and, right, the whole dream-assassin-trying-to-kill-him thing, that took priority. _Focus, Pavus._

Bull didn't push it. "Alright," he said, nodding. "So I get to punch you? It's a deal."

And so the night began.

At first, Dorian steadfastly rejected the pitchers of ale that Bull kept ordering for him—firstly, because the stuff was _wretched_ , and more importantly, because the alcohol would only make him more tired than he already was. Yet his resolve weakened when the barkeep pulled out one of those Tevinter vintages he was so homesick for, and being the only sober one at a tavern was hardly any fun at all, and Bull's coy little jibes about him being a teetotaler were becoming tiresome, and falling asleep at the bar from _boredom_ wouldn't be any better, surely?

So he ordered a glass of the Qarinus red, and then another glass, and then accepted one of those awful pints from Bull, and a few drinks later he found himself thoroughly contented. The room was warm, and the bard was singing the softest, loveliest little tune, he shut his eyes for a moment to take it in—

Then, _wham!_

Dorian hit the floor hard, startling awake. Bull was grinning above him. Dorian's arm ached, his beer was spilled everywhere, and the barkeep was giving him a rather savage look, but he was _awake_. Perfect.

Perfect the first time, at least. The second time, though, when he drifted off later that evening? _That_ earned him a dislocated shoulder.

"Sorry," Bull had said, as Dorian woke swearing and shouting, clutching his unhinged arm with horror. "You didn't wake up the first time I punched you, so—"

"Get a healer," Dorian shouted, and promptly passed out.

So much for that plan.

He woke, after a long while—that was the first surprise, that he woke at all, that he he'd dodged his dream-assassin again.

Also, he woke with his shoulder fixed, firmly back in its socket, which was a relief, even if the damned thing still ached worse than a wyvern bite. All the healer's potions and balms meant he couldn't help sleeping, they made him too drowsy, but that steady shoulder-ache made his sleep a shallow, fitful thing. Never deep enough for a Dreamer to get hold. Never deep enough for him to feel properly rested, either, but that was only a middling concern by now.

So, once the healer released him back to Skyhold, he threw away the pain-numbing draughts he'd been given, and took to whinging on and on about his arm (he wasn't above garnering a little sympathy or pity-favors here and there), and slept very little. After a week of that, he was ragged, and useless, and bone-tired, but he was still alive.

Then—one night, a bird blew right into his _bedroom_. Dorian nearly jumped out of his skin. He was jumping at everything by then: shadows, creaky floorboards, insects, himself. Not sleeping did that to you.

But the bird merely dropped a bit of rolled-up parchment, gave a husky croak, and flapped off quickly as it had arrived. The note it left behind had Leliana's seal on it. Dorian rolled his eyes. Of course. Such _was_ that woman's style.

He unfurled the scroll, and found a short note penned in her hand: _It is done._ Below that was a scrawled paragraph from one of her agents. Dorian skimmed it—said agent apparently was the one responsible for stabbing Valerius, and he went into some rather grisly detail on how the deed was done. At the bottom, clipped to the page, was a blood-spattered button, engraved with Valerius's seal.

Dorian rubbed the button between his fingers, considering. Couldn't be that easy, of course. Maybe Valerius had a particularly vindictive wife who would take charge of his affairs. Maybe it was never _him_ Dreaming at all, but some other mage Dorian hadn't accounted for. Maybe Leliana's quick work would just motivate others to come after him out of misplaced bravado. Maybe, maybe, so many maybes.

But, Maker's breath, he was _tired_ and _out of ideas_. Tomorrow Elan would have the draught for him, but _tonight_ he planned to sleep, and if the Maker saw fit to have him die then, well, he'd given his damnedest.

* * *

At the far edge of the fade, she senses him—a ripple in a steel-cool pond, a small bright stone slipping through liquid metal. A distant feeling, but heavy and distinct. She knows this feeling.

Dorian is back.

It's been a week since she last sensed him. He'd stopped appearing in the night, so she began taking sleeping-weed, to sleep through the days. But he wasn't lurking in the daylight, either. Probably, he'd started to suspect something—no one ever accused Dorian Pavus of being a fool. Not good, not good. She didn't have much of a backup plan if she couldn't hunt him in the Fade.

Maybe, she thought in desperation, maybe she was too far away. So she snuck right up to the edge of Skyhold, snuck _into_ Skyhold, and found an old storage room where she could hide. She hid under a pile of rusted old armor and slept there.

Still, her dreams contained nothing. But she kept at it—kept eating the sleeping-weed, even though it started to make her stomach retch, twenty hours of sleep a day was far too much—and she kept huddled in that dark, forgotten corner, and during her rare moments of wakefulness she nibbled at what little she had left of her rations, and thought very hard about anything except _what if he's warded me somehow, what if this won't work,_ because otherwise the sheer dread of it all would claw her sense away.

But tonight, she can feel him. She feels him now, the distant ripples of his presence breaking like little waves around her. He's here, here in the Fade. For how long is anyone's guess—but she doesn't need long. She is ready.

She breathes in deep, and pulls the Fade around her, bit by bit. This place is like so much potter's clay, to her—at first, it resists the touch, cold and unyielding, but she keeps at it, touching it with her mind-magics, kneading it, until it begins to melt toward her, sluggish but willing. Then she pulls it around her feet, and feels the ground becoming solid, feels the ground morph from dreamstuff into stone, gray and hard and smooth. She stretches her mind ahead of her, and the clay arches to form the shadow of a hall, and then tiles form on the floor, and a path stretches out before her.

She breathes out. She is ready.

She strides forward slowly, the pace of a pilgrim doing penance in the cloisters, every step deliberate. Steady and constant and detached. And focused, always focused, pushing the Fade a bit farther with every step. As she pulls closer to Dorian, she can sense more of him, senses his idling thoughts floating unrestricted through the Fade.

She will be upon him soon—she must choose where they meet—and after a moment's thought, she settles on the Circle of Minrathous. A setting familiar enough for her to recreate properly. And a setting familiar enough to _him_ that he may be caught off-guard. The Fade is so malleable to her now that these changes only take the barest thoughts—as soon as she thinks of Minrathous, she feels the Circle's great spire twisting above her, and with a little flick of her wrists, the corridor begins to glisten—first a dull pallor, but then the bright ivory and brilliant gold she remembers so well.

She presses forward. The Circle's grand antechamber is before her. Just one more alteration and the trap is set. This part is the trickiest, but she is ready—she pulls the Fade around her once more, pulls it _against_ her, and lets it touch her skin, shaping her form, clinging to her skin, her face, her eyes, lending her a new shape. Then, she strides into the antechamber.

Dorian's standing there, blinking. Dazed. Her doing. She can stagger people when she pulls them into her part of the Fade, confuse them, if only for a bit. And because he's dazed, he doesn't question the form standing before him, simply stares in bleak awe: "Alexius."

She offers only a wry smile. She hasn't the courage to try and imitate the man's voice; she only saw him a handful of times. It would give her away. In a minute, he'll notice how strangely silent his mentor is, he'll start to recover himself—but she only needs a minute.

"What brought you here?" Dorian asks. She ignores the question and steps closer, her staff gripped at her side. She doesn't bother gathering mana; magic isn't what kills, in the Fade. She's hidden the blade in the staff—the Fade-tipped edge is the thing that will make him dead, both here and back there. Dorian's scowling, like there's something he can't quite remember, but he's not raising his hands, not reaching for his own defense. He's almost in arm's reach and he's clueless. She moves her other hand toward the staff, moves to pull the blade, her heart's in her throat and her hand's on the hilt and on the next step she will draw—

—but something knocks her back, smashing all the wind out of her.

He's kicked her in the stomach; he's lunged forward; he's tackled her to the ground; he's got her by the throat.

It's so quick she doesn't understand what's happened. Was he feigning his confusion? Where did she misstep? The staff's been knocked out of her hands; she grasps wildly for it, but it's out of reach, and his knee is pressing hard against her stomach; she's pinned against the ground. She clings to Alexius's form, but the rest of the illusion starts crumbling around her—the tiled Circle hallways give way to the green glow and wretched-angled cliffs of the Fade, and Dorian's eyes become brighter and keener by the second, filled with a fury that terrifies her more than any magister.

"Clever trick," Dorian hisses in her ear, his grip tightening around her throat as the last bits of the Circle crumble around her. "I'd love to share some tea and discuss how you did it, once we— _wake up_."

* * *

He woke up.

He woke up with a gasp—and she had given up too much. Put too much of herself in the dream. And it _was_ a her, Dorian could sense that now. And where she was—he had only the _sense_ of it, but surely, if he hurried—

He was out of bed in seconds, throwing on the first pair of boots he could find and sprinting headlong out the door.

Upper courtyard. His poorly-executed studies on Dreaming hadn't been completely in vain; he could sense her presence, even if that sense was fading fast. He shouted for whatever guards were awake, _for Andraste's sake come over here_ , but he hadn't the time to check if they were following, so he just kept running. And as he turned down a long cloister, and saw her: Hooded. Dark-robed. And clambering fast over the wall.

Her hands were busy wrestling with the nooks in the stone, struggling to find the next foothold. Defenseless. He flung fire at her—but in that same moment, she _just_ managed to shimmy onto the battlements, and threw up a barrier before the flame struck her.

With an irritated snarl, Dorian dispelled her ward. As he did so, he saw her try to fade-step away—and then cry out as she failed. One of the protective enchantments around Skyhold must've prevented that.

Dorian seized the chance. With a yell, he leapt forward and threw a surge of ice in front of him, pushing it forward, forward, up the wall, toward her. It was right at the limit of his range, and he felt his arms aching with the effort—but the ice flew, and he was quick, too quick for her. It struck true, and for a moment, she froze, encased in crystal—then the ice cracked and shattered and she crumpled to the ground.

He watched her for a moment. She didn't stir, didn't so much as twitch. He'd meant to knock her out, not kill her. And he thought that was what he'd done. But you could never quite tell for sure, when people just crumpled like that.

"Right, let's get a look at you," Dorian muttered, jogging up a side stairwell, toward where she lay on the ramparts. As he drew close, he kept one hand still on his staff, poised to strike at any motion, edging nearer and nearer. When he came close enough, he nudged her side with his boot—there was a small breath, but no movement. He grabbed her by the shoulder, turned her over, whispered some light into his staff to get a better look—

No, no. He gritted his teeth, wanted to punch her, wanted to step away and pretend he didn't see this. He'd expected some Ventatori holdout, some disgruntled member of a rival family, some scoundrel of little importance, a nameless sellsword—anything but _her_. "Brielle," he whispered, and despite the hour and all his recent sleepless nights, for that instant, he felt fully, horribly awake.

* * *

The last time he'd seen her had only been a few years ago, back when he'd been at the Circle of Minrathous. Mousy brown hair. Puggish little nose. Carried a staff that was almost comically taller than she was, but by the Maker did she know how to use it. Of all the enchanters vying against him for the title of Senior Enchanter, she'd been his only proper competition.

She was a principled sort. Principled in a rather icy, imperious way—her bookishness made her keenly familiar with the proper, practiced ways of doing magic, and she did a poor job disguising her contempt for those who cut corners or lacked her attention for detail. Or, worse, the sorts of spoiled, talentless hacks who relied on blood to get ahead.

Even as a _child_ , Brielle had been that way. She and Dorian had apprenticed in the same circle, briefly, the Circle of Teraevyn, where Dorian lasted a whole eight months before getting kicked out. He'd started dabbling in blood magic that year—every teenager in Tevinter dabbled in blood magic at some point, Dorian simply figured he was getting a bit of a head start—and when he used his little side-hobby to conjure some spectacularly ornate spells during a contest among the apprentices, the only one who didn't seem duly impressed was Brielle, scowling at him from the back corner.

She caught him alone later that day. Cornered him in a spare moment, looked him dead in the eyes, and whispered: "You were trying to hide it, but I know. I know you were using blood magic."

Dorian stared down at the little scrub of a girl—who was she, had she even spoken to him before?—and then laughed. "Yes, and? Are you going to tell someone?"

Her word against the son of a magister? They both knew how that would go.

Brielle shook her head. "No." Her gaze held steady. "But you're only using it because you're not good enough without it."

Her little words stung. More than they should have. He had retorted with—something. Something lame. Brielle had simply walked away, and her accusation dug right under Dorian's skin—who was _she_ to say he wasn't good enough? Walking back to his quarters that evening, he told himself that her opinions were of no consequence, that she was merely jealous she couldn't achieve such prowess—and yet, he threw away his copy of Rudin's _Treatise on Sanguine Magicks_ that night, and didn't use any of its tricks again. That was a full two years before his father even broached the blood magic topic, the whole "last resort of a weak mind" speech and all that. Later, Dorian would become principled and vocal about his scorn for blood magic. But back then, he had just wanted to prove Brielle wrong.

And then she turned up at the edge of Skyhold, petty assassin for some contemptible magister's idle scheming. She would've thought such an errand was beneath her, once.

Dorian supposed, now, it was her turn to prove him wrong.

* * *

A minute later, a handful of templar-guards rushed up beside Dorian, brandishing their swords, forming a semicircle around Brielle, and asking him—questions. Completely sensible, reasonable questions— _what's going on? who's this? what did she do?_ —but all the adrenaline had rushed out of him quickly as it had come, and Dorian felt his tiredness crush over him, heavy like tar, making his head feel thick, making his mind muddy, making their questions insensible, impossible to parse. Their words rumbled around him like so many waves, and he just stood and stared blankly at Brielle's unconscious form, struggling to construe some plausible set of steps that would've led her from Tevinter to _here_.

But such inaction was dangerous with the lyrium-scent of recent magic still thick in the air. The guards started twitching—one jumped at a passing night-swift's shadow, and another tripped and nearly dropped his sword. Dorian knew, in some vague, distant way, that he had to tell them _something._

"She's a mage," he managed at last. "A dangerous mage. And—a prisoner now, I suppose. Go—go lock her up and—keep watch over her, and _keep her from using magic_. However it is you templars do that."

Pitiful instructions, really, but that seemed to be all they needed. A few minutes later they had her clapped in irons, and she was just beginning to stir—not enough to talk, but he could see her fidgeting in discomfort. Dorian couldn't stand up any longer; his head felt so _heavy_. He turned and slouched himself against the battlements.

A moment later, Leliana arrived on the scene, eyes bright in the midnight darkness. Dorian tilted his head up and forced a wry smile. "Well, our little magically-themed whodunit has been solved. Turns out it wasn't Valerius after all. Or the butler, even. What a twist."

Leliana's expression was uncharacteristically soft. "Are you alright, Dorian?"

"Fine, fine. Nothing a little sleep won't fix." Or a lot of sleep. Dorian was starting to consider nodding off right here on the battlements. He didn't even have the energy to shiver from the cold.

Leliana's gaze then flickered to Brielle, and her eyes narrowed. "It is good you captured her, rather than killing her outright. This should not have been overlooked. I will have questions for her."

Leliana's tone made Dorian a bit queasy. He wanted to say, maybe there was a mistake. He wanted to say, there _must've_ been a mistake. Something they didn't understand. But he still couldn't think of how Brielle got here in the first place, let alone how she should've _not_ gotten here, so he just stared at Leliana, mute.

Then Cullen arrived—hair mussed, half-dressed, and face wrinkled like he'd caught a whiff of something foul.

"Captain Harold woke me," he said, sidling up to Leliana, "shouting about a rogue mage, and all of Skyhold being in danger, and needing a whole squad of templars in the dungeon—or something to that effect. He didn't quite seem to know what was happening."

His eyes fell on Brielle, who was just then being dragged away by the templars.

"I assume that's our mage," he added, coldly, and when he looked back to Leliana and Dorian, his lips were pulled tight. "Care to explain to me what this is all about? Either of you?"

Dorian and Leliana exchanged uneasy looks. It wasn't that Dorian had been _hiding_ this business from Cullen, exactly; he'd just thought of it as a personal matter, and had gone to Leliana with his personal problem, simple as that. Except, when his personal problem involved a rogue mage that ventured all the way into _Skyhold_ to get at him, maybe it wasn't quite a personal matter anymore, and probably one of them should've thought to let the commander know about it. Particularly with, oh, all the poorly-understood and highly-dangerous dream-magic going on.

Whups.

"That woman is from Tevinter," Leliana began, after an awkward silence, and began to relate the whole sorry tale. Except, she had a practiced way of speaking that was carefully vague at critical parts, which set Cullen to growling and pressing harder for details, and before long the two of them were shouting at each other.

Dorian saw his chance to slip away, and seized it. A bit cowardly of him; he deserved the shouting just as much as dear Leliana. But he'd simply have to owe her the favor. It ached to keep his head up, it ached to keep standing straight, it ached to even _think_. When he finally managed to stagger back to his corridors, he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

* * *

He slept through the night. And the dawn. And midday, and sunset. When he woke, twilight was just beginning to darken the sky, and his back was sore from lying down for so long, and for one blissful moment, his only thought was of how pleasant it had been to really, truly sleep for a change.

The next moment, of course, he remembered all that had happened, and he turned over and groaned into his pillow. What a _mess_. If he thought he stood a chance of falling back asleep, he would've tried just then, but no, he was too awake now.

He figured he should go to Leliana. Catch up on whatever had happened while he'd been asleep. Maybe she'd even questioned Brielle already, gotten some answers out of the girl. Probably, Dorian needed to talk to Brielle himself; he had his own questions. Probably he should get started on all that straightaway.

Instead, Dorian stood up, got dressed, and walked straight to the tavern.

He was surprised (and, perhaps, a touch offended) that no one was waiting for him outside his chambers. He _had_ fallen asleep for an _awfully_ long time, after all. He could've died. Surely he was important enough to have someone checking on him?

But he supposed it _did_ make the whole shirking-his-responsibilities thing that much simpler, so he was glad for that. There was hardly a familiar face in the tavern, either, besides the barkeep—the Inquisition had grown so much as of late that the place was packed with dozens of bright-eyed recruits, and pilgrims, and what-have-you, but hardly any of the old guard. A great deal of them had moved on, he supposed. He pulled up a seat at the bar, frowning into the crowd. Cole had ghosted away to who-knows-where by now, and Cassandra was off doing whatever it was a Divine did, and the Inquisitor was off on some diplomatic trip or another…

When he realized he was hunting for the Iron Bull's face in the crowd, he shook himself, gestured for the barkeep, and ordered a pint of Ferelden beer. Sometimes, drink simply couldn't wait.

He downed the first pint quick enough. Second pint, too. When he stood for a moment to wipe someone else's spilled beer off his leg, he felt himself wobble a bit—he recalled that he hadn't actually _eaten_ anything for an entire day, and should probably be going a bit easier on the drink. But he ordered a third pint anyway, and he'd been a good ways into that when, scanning the crowd again, he saw none other than Cullen standing in the center of the tavern.

The commander looked so awkward, still trussed up in all his armor, that Dorian had to laugh. From afar, he caught Dorian's eye, and strode over: "Dorian, I was looking for you," Cullen said, a little breathless. "Is now a good time?"

How sweet. So someone _had_ been checking on him.

"Now is a perfectly good time," Dorian drawled, pulling up a barstool and gesturing over it grandly. "Take a seat, commander."

Cullen looked at the wobbly little barstool, coughed into his hand, and remained standing. "Leliana updated me on this prisoner of yours. Brielle Bellarous. We've got her in a cell with two templars standing guard round the clock, though they're not sure what they should be keeping watch _for_ —can you tell me more about how this Dreaming magic works, what it looks like, anything at all?"

Dorian chuckled. "Does that seem like the sort of information I'd be keeping to myself, commander?"

Cullen's eyes went cold and flinty. "Just like how you told me about all this in the first place?" His voice was almost a growl. "Forgive me if I'm skeptical, apparently I've been kept out of this before—"

"Right," Dorian interrupted, wincing. "Right, sorry. I deserve that." Cullen relented, and Dorian pushed his pint idly across the counter, from one hand to the other, pensive. "But it's true that I don't know anything else. Nothing I haven't already told Leliana, anyway, and I'm sure she's debriefed you by now."

Cullen crossed his arms over his chest, frowning. "That's not really what I was hoping to go back to the guards with." He looked over his shoulder, at a corner where a dozen of his new recruits were huddled around a table, then back to Dorian. "I don't like it. Leliana says this person's information may be important to you, but—that kind of power—so much we don't know about it—seems too dangerous to keep around here. I'd sooner have her dead."

"Dead?" Dorian said, a little too quickly, nearly knocking over his beer. Of course, she _did_ have to be judged at some point, and it was quite possibly a foregone conclusion anyway, the Inquisition couldn't have bloody _assassins_ getting amnesty—but the defensive babble came out of him almost unbidden. "Seems a bit severe to call for her death right off, don't you think? Brielle, she is—she was—she's sensible. Sensible enough. She can't be after anyone but me, that would—would impugn her sense of honor, you see, she shouldn't cause your little templars any trouble." He only slurred a little.

Cullen sighed and pulled a hand over his face. "Is there anything _else_ you can tell me about her, then? Anything to help us?"

Dorian stared very fixedly into his glass. What could he say? That he knew her, once. Just like he'd known Alexius once, before he'd joined the Ventatori. And like he'd known Felix once, before he died. And the ones before them—old lovers, friends, cousins, teachers. The stories only ever went one of two ways.

It was like a fated thing. Either you turned into the most wretched sort of Tevinter, or you got snuffed out trying to fight it.

Or you lingered in a Ferelden tavern like a coward.

"Leliana says you two were in a Circle together," Cullen pressed.

Dorian tilted his head to look at Cullen again. Or glare, rather. It wasn't Cullen's fault, exactly, but this whole line of questioning was _ruining_ the nice buzz he'd had going. Of course, Cullen didn't look exactly happy, either. Something about the commander's scowl reminded Dorian of when he'd seen the Cullen last week, storming down to the dungeon, and Dorian blurted a name: "Samson."

"What?"

Dorian's smile was a bit twisted, uncharacteristically stiff. "Tell me about Samson. _You_ two were in a Circle together, am I right? Let's hear about that."

For a commander, it was certainly easy to catch Cullen off-guard. "I'm—sorry, I'm not sure if I understand how this relates—"

"Then this isn't a good time."

"What?"

He only slurred his words a little: "There is music, and beer, and good company, and you are ruining it with all these— _questions_ —and you asked me if this was a good time, and I'm saying, no, it isn't. Come back later." He finished the last of his pint and slammed the empty glass down on the counter, as if for emphasis.

"When is _later_?"

"Later," Dorian said, without looking at Cullen. The commander lingered a moment, and scowled, and then sighed, and left him in peace.

Dorian still held the empty glass in his hand, very tightly. He would've rather liked to throw it at—something. Anything. But he had far too much Tevinter politeness for something so rash, so _common_.

He ordered another drink.

* * *

Finding a copy of Rudin's _Treatise on Sanguine Magicks_ had been even easier than Dorian had been expecting, even with a hangover. The next morning, it took maybe five minutes of pawing through a crate of seized Ventatori belongings before he found a volume, its slender black binding and gold-lettered cover familiar like a rash. Apparently, blood mages in the south acquired their talents solely through word-of-mouth, but in Tevinter, this little book was as common in highborn houses as fine china, or overpriced spices. Just better-hidden.

Merely picking up the book made his stomach turn. Like a black spot from pirate-lore, the thing was a curse and a portent wrapped in one. Last time he'd found a copy, it'd been on a desk in his father's estate. The same day that Dorian left for good.

What a precedent.

He took the book back to his nook in the library, where he proceeded to spend the next several hours pouring over the thing—he figured, the faster he got the information he needed, the sooner he could be done with the thing.

Sister Leliana passed by at some point, and she must have recognized the text as well: "I was not aware you studied blood magic," she commented lightly.

Dorian glared at her from over the top of his book. Waited for her to say something else. Leliana stared mutely back.

"I don't," Dorian said at last, sighing, closing the book and pushing it away from him. It was all he could do to keep from burying his face in his hands. "Others _do_ , though. Know thy enemy, and all that. I thought I might get a few ideas for protections."

"What sort of protections?"

"The kind that don't involve blood magic," he said, scowling. Maybe she was just curious, but he wasn't fond of this line of questioning. He looked back down at his notes, started scribbling something in the margin, if he looked busy maybe she'd go on—he tried that for all of two seconds before he threw the quill back down and locked eyes with the spymaster. "Sister Leliana, it's clear that your interest in this is more than academic. Or Inquisition-related. Or whatever you please." There was some heat to his voice, but mostly he sounded tired. "I'd like to know why."

Dorian thought she might play coy, but after only the briefest of pauses, she answered. "The Inquisition is now in a position of considerable influence and power. For how long, I cannot say—but I would see that influence used to bring peace, to bring lasting change, as far as it is able." Her eyes scanned the shelves around her, then fixed back on Dorian. "Tevinter will try to forget what happened here. If they forget, the Ventatori can rise again. Or others like them. You've seen what the consequences are."

Dorian stiffened. He knew his face probably looked _gruesome_ right about now, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Leliana's tone was mild as ever: "Gereon Alexius was a good man, tempted by awful circumstance. Others need not share his fate." She paused, nodding, as if she'd finished checking the numbers on some complex calculation. "You agree."

It was a statement, not a question. Of course he agreed.

"You are still at Skyhold. Why, I wonder?"

And of course he wanted to go home. He'd told the Inquisitor as much. Change things. Change minds. But a few extra months at Skyhold had seemed harmless enough; Tevinter could handle itself for _that_ long, surely. And then this dream-assassin had delayed things. But the excuses seemed thin and feeble even as he thought them. He hadn't booked passage home. He hadn't even picked a date.

"I would help you. I would make Tevinter better."

Except this was something he had to do for himself. Even if he hadn't yet. He would. He had to. Soon as he figured out how to go without getting killed first. It wasn't just cowardice that kept him here, and it wasn't just ego that made him want to go—he told himself, he hoped—because he had little doubt Leliana _could_ do as she said. But it wouldn't mean anything at all if it came about from the Inquisition flexing its muscle, wouldn't be a real change at all—this time, Tevinter had to save Tevinter.

But he couldn't quite figure out how to explain that to Leliana. She was a little scary that way—too cunning, too persuasive, could probably talk him into anything, if he gave her the chance. So instead he said, "Let me talk to Brielle," which wasn't much of an answer. But Leliana seemed to take it for one, nodding and turning back into the keep.

He went back to his book—the Ventatori's book, rather. Started scribbling notes again. He was stalling, but it was productive stalling, stalling that had to get done. When he reached one of the last chapters, though—a portion on advanced mind-magics, and a particularly bloody ritual that looked a bit too familiar—he slammed the thing shut, and sighed. Probably the only book in the world that could make the prospect of going down to the dungeons appealing by comparison.

He went down to the dungeons alone, and spoke to no one on his way. If he paused for even a moment, he might lose his nerve.


	3. Chapter 3

Her mind is a blank.

Not the blankness that comes with patience, with calm, with the focus of working deep magic.  Instead, it’s the staticky gray blankness of the sky before a thunderstorm—unnaturally quiet, and yet the air crackles soundlessly with frantic energy.  She keeps trying to think, just  _ think _ , but every coherent thought shatters soon as it’s formed, and splinters into that gray static. She, the fastidious planner, had planned for no contingencies, because there could  _ be _ no contingencies.  She had not planned for  _ this _ and now she has nothing, and she’d been close, so close, oh Andraste if Valerius found out—

She pulls her thoughts back, a harsh jerk of the reins.  She can’t let her good sense go galloping away.  She needs to plan.  She needs to move, to act—she has already tried standing up, just to be  _ moving,  _ but vertigo swept her so completely that she was falling forward and dry-heaving within seconds.

She breathes, and breathes, and feels her pulse on her neck, to sense whether it has slowed.  And she focuses—though it’s hard, with the air down here so dry that she can feel her lips cracking.  She focuses—not because she plans to cast.  She’s already tried her magic on the lock—hexproof, of course—and she’s jailed, in any case; how far could she get?  But if she can just  _ focus _ , if she can bring her mind to that calm place, that center-of-centers, that place from which all deep magic springs, then maybe she can keep the panicking at bay—the panic that even now is creeping along her goosefleshed arms, and trembling in her fingers.  She breathes.   _ To make from nothing one must first have nothing _ —

And a bit of water drips onto her head.

She flinches, and shivers all out-of-proportion to the chill.  It was just a drop, a little drop water.  But that's all it takes to shatter her focus.

Once she starts shivering it's hard to stop, with the cold and the dark.  Cold stone floors and cold stagnant air.  And it's a darkness so complete that, when she first woke within it, she thought she had been spell-blinded.  If she squints, hard and long, she can make out the thin dark-gray outlines of iron bars before her, but nothing more.

Another drip of water falls, but this time it's besider her, splashing faint on the floor.

Maybe no one's going to come, she thinks, unbidden.  Maybe the Inquisition's forgotten about her.  Maybe she'll just be left alone down here until she rots—

But of course Dorian Pavus would never just leave her alone.  That prodigious peacock would never miss a chance to crow over a victory.  Even though this  _ was _ really just a snatch of stupid luck on his part—she'd planned so carefully, she'd nearly had him,  _ should _ have had him, if she had just been one step closer—

She scowls and smashes a fist into the wall beside her.  It hurts, but the pain's more interesting than nothing.

Maker, if only she could _sleep_.  Her head is aching for lack of it.  But she can't, she knows that.  She doesn't bother even trying to lie down.  She can feel that dry ache in her throat, the very thing she'd been warned about, _be careful with sleeping-weed,_ _too much of that_ dormesi _and you won't stop craving it—_

Again the grotesque slips into her mind, unbidden—she could die from withdrawal.  It's unlikely, certainly, she's only been using it the past week, and only to hunt Dorian.  And yet, she already feels so weakened.  Greater mages than she have died of thirsting for  _ dormesi _ , and still more are locked away in sanitariums to suffer slowly—

There's a ringing in her ears, a keening static that consumes all thought, turning everything into head-blindness and her own racing heartbeat.  She shouldn't be here, she wants to throw up again, for a mad desperate moment she wants to die—

"And what's brought you here, girlie?"

The voice is a rusted trap snapping shut.  The sound of it is so sudden she startles, yelping like a caught rabbit, and she flails blindly with her arms as if to strike.

She regains herself—scowls at her own small cry, so high and undignified—and lowers her hands, squinting around in the darkness.  Like before, she sees nothing.

"No need to be bashful," the flaking-rust voice says, from somewhere in that nothingness.  "We're all slumming it together down here, eh?"

The words are fine enough, but the tone makes her bristle.  She doesn't like this man, she decides, in her abrupt way, doesn't like this voice.  It's a voice too fond of answers.  She's heard men like this before.

"Had a chat with the Sister, yet?" the voice asks.  He pauses, and then takes her silence as an answer.  "Well, she's a sharp lady, for sure.  She'll loosen that tongue right up.  Just offering you fair warning."

She almost asks him to repeat that—almost.  The ringing in her ears is growing louder, the hissing electric-fizzling sound that comes after a thundercrack.

She knows full well what he said.  He said  _ loosen _ but she's no fool; that can just as well mean  _ cut, maim, starved til delirious, knives shoved under the nails, hung out by rope for the crows, flogged to death _ .  Everything she's heard about this Inquisition comes from Valerius, mostly, and oh, Valerius is a liar, but all the best liars tell as much truth as they can manage.  The south's a barbaric place, she's seen that for herself.  And none too kind to mages.  The static's louder—a thunderous drone, a thousand cicadas buzzing, Maker but does her head feel so very  _ heavy— _

"What's your name, girlie?" the voice asks.

"Be quiet," she spits.  She'd meant to just ignore it.  The only way to ever deal with hecklers is by just ignoring them, but, as her focus is slipping, so is her patience, too.

She can almost hear his lips curling up around his words: "Ho.  A vint, are you?  Guess they don't teach you lot manners."

She is in such a savage mood that she strains to think of a properly cutting retort.  She is in such a savage state that she can think of none.

Nothing then.  Nothing for a long while.  She thinks that maybe she's alone again, that the voice has fallen asleep, or crawled back into whatever hole he came from.  But of course, as soon as she thinks that, he is there: "If you won't sleep, lass, we may as well pass the time together.  S'not often a lady gets put away down here.  The name's Samson."

She hates how she can hear his sneer.  "Be quiet," she tries to say, but the words come out garbled.  She clamps her mouth shut, a new terror seizing her now.  O Maker, is speech already leaving her?  She's heard of that, people going mad in the dark, though she's barely been here any time at all.  Or at least, she doesn't think she has.  She wants to try speaking again but she can't bear to let that voice hear her.

Nothing, nothing.  Once again, she thinks of death.  She tries again to make a motion to stand, but her body aches too much, quivering uneasy with lack of sleep.  All that's left is to sit—and she sits awake in that dark place for a long while, long after the voice has quieted itself at last, long after she loses count of the droplets dripping from the ceiling, and long before she finally slips exhausted into some restive state that could almost be called sleep.

* * *

The woman got to Brielle first.

Or, rather, the templars did.  They jolted her awake in the morning with a splash of cold water on her head, and before she could so much as sputter, they'd knocked her back against the wall, with a blow that felt half-magicked.  Someone thew a bag over her head, and and someone else shackled her ankles together, and then shackled her hands together behind her back.  They tried to prod her into walking—"jes move yer feet, girl, s'not that hard"—but gave up after only half a minute, electing to instead just drag her along.

Probably they thought Brielle was just being stubborn.  The truth, which horrified her more whatever else was happening, was that she simply could not seem to get her legs to work quite right.

They dragged her left, and right, and right and left, some long circuitous route through some stronghold she'd never seen.  At last they propped her up on something—a chair, probably, they had her sit.  She heard armor-jangling as the templars left her, followed by a door slam

Then, at last, the bag was pulled away from her eyes, and she could see.

One large windowless room, walls completely bare, as far as she could tell, except for a small torch burning in the corner.  Drab gray stone, all of it, with a few suspicious stains on the floor that Brielle tried not to think about.  And, sitting in front of her, was—well, probably her interrogator, she supposed.

She looked too dainty for the part; that was Brielle's first thought.  This must be the Sister, as that voice in the darkness had called her.  She certainly looked the part: head hooded, hair soft, face softer.  She was sitting, too, in some simple wooden chair, such that they were facing each other at eye level.  Add some tea and this could've been some pleasant afternoon chat.

The Sister introduced herself sweet as anything: "My name is Leliana, of Orlais, former left hand of the Divine Justinia and, presently, Spymaster of the Inquisition."

They actually  _ call _ you that? Brielle wanted to ask.  Not a euphemism, not "eyes of the Inquisitor" or anything like that?  Seemed a bit brash.  But she bit her tongue on the jibe.

"And you are?" Leliana urged, gently.

Once again, she kept her mouth shut.

"Dorian tells me your name is Brielle Bellarous," Leliana said, with a steady small smile.  "You are friends with him, yes?"

"I'm... familiar with him."

"Merely familiar?  Strange of you to cross all of Thedas to murder someone you are merely familiar with."

Brielle tilted her head, considering.  "Is that stranger than murdering a friend?"

Leliana chuckled.  "You'd be surprised."  Then: "Who sent you?"

"I came on my own," Brielle answered, too fast.

"Lies already," Leliana admonished with a smile.  "It is touching, perhaps, trying to protect the man who sent you."

It wasn't anything like  _ touching _ , of course.  But Brielle hadn't thought this part through, yet—hadn't planned on getting captured—hadn't planned on getting questioned.  Would there be any harm in just telling the truth?  She was dead either way, most likely, but would Valerius know if she betrayed him in the end?  Or would Valerius care either way—just assume she'd spilled everything regardless, and punish her just the same?

"Who sent you?" the Sister repeated.

Safer to try and defend Valerius, Brielle decided with a knee-jerk judgment.  Valerius would know if she folded and begged for the Inquisition's mercy—somehow or another he always seemed to know.

"Who sent you?"

"It was the Venatori," Brielle blurted, another lie, "they're—we're—still angry over being thwarted, if it hadn't been for Dorian's meddling maybe we'd be like kings by now."

Leliana's smile didn't fade an inch.  "No, Miss Bellarous.  It was Magister Valerius."

"I've never heard that name."  Maybe if she just told a dozen lies for every question they'd give up on getting the truth out of her.  She launched into another feverish rationale: "It was Magister Mardelcedi.  A conspiracy of his, actually, they've a grudge against House Pavus ever since Lady Anette snubbed Lady Laudres at the Aemulatus Magnam."

Leliana smile deepened —that even, eerie smile.  "I am tolerant of untruths, Miss Bellarous.  I am well-used to them, and trust that we will get past them in time.  The Inquisitor, however, is significantly less so.  He returns from his travels in a month."  She looked Brielle over, up and then down.  "It is in your interest to straighten your story out before then."

With that, Leliana rose from her chair.  Brielle craned her neck around to follow her.  The Sister was walking to the far wall, where that lone torch crackled.  Then, in an instant—she lifted something and the lone torch was snuffed, leaving Brielle blinking in the sudden dark.  She waited for her eyes to adjust, straining them to focus—but not even a sliver of light crept under that door, she realized at length, and not even an ember of that lamp was left aglow.  The effect was surreal: darker than dark.  She hadn't realized a place could be so dark.

"Let us begin again," a voice called.

Brielle jerked her head around.  She hadn't heard Leliana move, hadn't seen her, but the voice came from the other side of the room.  Or were there two Lelianas?  No, that was stupid; it was a trick.  The darkness and the echoes made everything seem like it was everywhere all at once.  She had to keep her wits about her, Brielle told herself, or else she'd—

"Who sent you?" Leliana called, from somewhere else now.

"I came on my own—"

Something grabbed Brielle—from behind, by the shoulders, clenching the tendons of her shoulders so tightly she thought they'd snap.  "Brielle.  Dear."  And there was Leliana's voice, right in her ear, so close she could feel her hot breath.  "Let us get past this."

A rough pull sent Brielle teetering backwards in her chair.  She tried to flail forward but, of course, her wrists were bound behind her, and the effort was useless.  As the chair fell, Brielle hit the floor headfirst, loud enough she could hear the  _ crack _ as her skull smacked against it.  She shrieked; tears jumped into her eyes, and she clenched her jaw against them.

Leliana gave no indication she'd even noticed.  "Who sent you?" she repeated once more.  The tone, the volume, the timbre—Leliana's voice sounded exactly the same every time she asked.  It was eerie, a bird brokenly singing the same song over and over and over til it was day and night and then day again, heedless of anything around it.

Brielle had never learned to hold her tongue when vexed.  "If you already  _ know _ who it is, then why are you—"

A rough kick, from the right, knocked the wind out of her chest, made her wheeze before she could finish the sentence.  "We must get you used to speaking the truth," Leliana said.

_ Maker _ , Brielle thought, and wheezed again.

"Who sent you?"  The broken-bird refrain.

Brielle clenched her eyes shut.  No harm if they already knew.  "Valerius, alright, you said you already know it's Valerius."  

Brielle heard two quick footsteps, and flinched in anticipation of a blow that never came.  She thought she sensed Leliana standing right by her face, though in this dark she couldn't be sure.

"Better," Leliana said.  "I would like you to be more concise, however.  Tell me again, who sent you?"

Brielle gawped: "I already told you once, can't you listen the first—"

Another kick, this time from the left.  Again she was left wheezing for breath.  "Who sent you?"

"Valerius," Brielle breathed.

"And what is his full name?"

"M-Magister Nikolos Astrid Valerius."   _ Maker _ .

Something grabbed her again—but this time it's wasn't pushing, but rather, pulling.  Something wrapped around her torso, and she realized at length that she was being held tight against Leliana's chest.  Brielle could feel the Sister's breath again, by her right ear.  And she could feel a coldness against her throat, metallic, smooth—another set of chains? something to bludgeon her with?

"That was good," Leliana purred.  "And who  _ else _ did he send?"

A dangerous question.  Brielle twisted as much as she could manage, and tried for a bit of magefire, but her casting hand produced only the barest spark and then fizzled.  That blow the Templars had dealt her, she realized blearily, the one that had felt half-magicked—was that the cause?  The Templars here were real, not like in Tevinter.  They'd knocked the mana from her; how long would it last? not forever, surely?

The spymaster held her tight.  Brielle stilled, but still kept her silence.

Ever so slightly, the cold metal twitched in Leliana's hand, and Brielle felt a little papercut-sting at her throat.  And that was when Brielle realized it wasn't chains, or a club, but a  _ blade _ —she wrenched away from the thing with a shout, writhing, flailing, but the blade edged ever closer.  Had she really thought Leliana looked dainty?  The woman was all coiled muscle, pulling her blade-arm in closer, closer, and holding Brielle fast—

"Who else did he send?" Leliana repeated.

"M-Maker, this is insane—"

"Who else?"  The blade was there again, the little papercut feeling turned into a harsh crisp sting—

"Th-There were two others," Brielle blurted, desperate, and all at once Leliana was gone, the blade was gone, and she was dropped knee-first back onto the cold stone floor.  She wheezed, trying to catch her breath.  She wanted to feel her neck but the chains, the damn chains, kept her hands fast behind her back.  She waited for her heart to slow, waited a long while in the silence.  It lasted so long that a mad hope drifted into her mind: maybe that was all, maybe that was everything Leliana had wanted to ask.

Finally there a light—not much light, just a little sparkle in the corner, but in this darkness even that sparkle seemed brilliant.  Brielle could only just see the sparks if she strained her neck all the way around.  And with it, she heard a familiar scraping sound, the bright sound of steel-on-steel.

The sound of sharpening a blade.

Brielle's breath caught in her throat.

"That's a start," Leliana said, with a mocking warmth.  "Now, dear, again: who sent you?"

 

* * *

 

_ Valerius. _

Brielle mouthed the word silently, trying it, testing it, yet it still felt strange on her tongue.   _ Valerius, Valerius _ .  What was once a word had become a chant, a drone, a set of syllables shouted and sobbed so often they had lost all meaning.

The templars had dragged her back to the cell.  How long ago, Brielle wasn't sure.  Quite some time, certainly.  She'd been lying here for quite some time.  How long she'd been away, she wasn't sure either.  Time felt stagnant to her, here, less a river and more a bog, everything still and heavy and sliding slowly, if at all.  Dimly she wondered if she was under the influence of some time magic.  That had always been one of Dorian's pet subjects.  But Dorian hadn't been in that room, just Leliana, and she didn't seem to be a caster.  She didn't need anything so extravagant for her arts.

But probably it wasn't anything Leliana had done at all.  Probably it was just her own exhaustion.  Or maybe the lack of sleep, the lack of dreams, the withdrawal from her  _ dormesi _ .  She could feel a tic forming on her left cheek, twitching:  _ just a little, if only I could have just a little. _

She wondered where that voice was.  That Samson person.  He'd already taunted her before, about how the "Sister" was going to get to her.  Well, she was got.  And a—a  _ person _ like that—it felt too strange to think of him as a person, having only heard his voice, mostly while nigh-delirious, but what else would she call him?  So, that person—he didn't seem the type to miss a chance to jeer.

And yet the halls were silent.  Dead-silent.  She wondered if maybe she and Samson were the only ones down here.  She wondered if he was sleeping.  She wondered—with a little hiccough—if maybe he'd been dragged away to be questioned, or executed.  She didn't know anything about him or his sentence, after all.

The thought twisted her stomach.  She should check on him, she thought.  What happened to him could happen to her next.

"Hey," she tried, softly at first.  For some reason she didn't want to say his name.  Names felt dangerous down here, revulsive, like invoking incantations from a spellbook not yet understood.  She kept calling: "Hey.  Hey!"

"I have a name."  Like before, she could hear the smile on his lips.  "But, hey yourself, girlie."

It was irritating, how relieved she was to hear him.  He sounded well enough—as far as she could tell by voice alone, anyway.  Consider him checked upon.

She lowered herself back onto the floor—even sitting up for that little bit made the room spin.  She lie down, stared at the ceiling, and tried very hard to think of nothing as she waited for time to go stagnant again.  But it was as though Samson's voice had dislodged so much rubble, built up in her mind; now a hundred little pebbly worries and thoughts were clattering down.

She pulled herself upright again, stepping closer to the bars of her cell.  "Hey," she said.  No answer, this time.  She waited.  She licked her dry lips.  Then: "I was wondering.  What's the Inquisitor like?"

The man snorted.  "What's your Valerius like?"

It took her a moment to process—the meaningless syllables, they sounded so strange in the lips of another.  But once she did, she started: "How did you hear that name?"

"You talk in your sleep, girlie," he said, and laughed.  Brielle flushed—she'd never talked in her sleep before, not once; she had control of that while Dreaming.  But she hadn't Dreamed last night, couldn't Dream, and the thought that she could be so exposed, so  _ naked _ without it—

"I didn't hear much," he added.  "I just got a knack for hearing these things, and he sounded important, s'all.  So, Valerius, what's he like?"

She knew there were ears everywhere, probably, guards lurking down the hall, or a lackey of Leliana's hidden in the shadows.  And she didn't want to be speaking truths to Samson anyway.  She considered a moment, and went with something wry: "He's a magister.  Shouldn't that tell you enough?"

Samson laughed at that; nerves made Brielle laugh with him, for a few moments anyway, up until his laughs turned to a deep-chested hacking.  She listened for a dread moment—this wasn't a momentary cough, she realized; with each hack she could hear fleshy bits squishing in his lungs.  But after a minute the coughing died down, and she heard him grunt and clear his throat.  "Probably plenty like the Inquisitor, then.  Talking heads everywhere are the same in my book.  Use their people up and then toss 'em away."

Brielle hissed impatiently.  That didn't tell her anything useful.  She tried again: "Does he ever—are there any other mages down here?"

Samson clicked his tongue with a  _ tut _ ing sound.  "Not so.  He's a Circle man, alright, through and through.  Most of 'em he has killed.  A few get turned tranquil."

"Come again?"

"Tranquil.  You know, the rite the chantry do to mages who can't keep their magic all nice and tidy—"

"I know what it is," Brielle snapped, her voice shaking more than she'd like.  She'd hoped that was another of Valerius's lies.  Give her a thousand days in a room with Leliana before the Rite.  Give her death before the Rite; she'd braced herself for that.  "But the Inquisitor, he's a mage, isn't he?"

"Like I said.  A Circle man."

"And so am I.  What's that supposed to mean?"

"Ah, a  _ Ferelden _ Circle, lass.  Things are different down here, I imagine, from what you're used to.  Here they keep the mages in prison from birth, and give trinkets and treats to the ones best at snitching out the others, whoever tries hoping for more.  A man raised like that—a man who thrived like that—that's the sort of man who don't think a thing of turning a sister tranquil."

She shuddered.  Of course tranquility was a  _ thing _ in Tevinter, and even there she thought it barbaric, but there at least there, it was a weapon limited to quarreling magisters.  But here, in the north? with mages so hated by all? what kind of person would turn against their own?

"It's not like you went after  _ him _ , though," Samson said.  "He may just kill you, skip bothering any further."

Samson's voice was as light as she'd ever heard, almost soothing, but somehow that just set her nerves on edge.  She realized why: "I don't think you believe that."

He chuckled.  "Apologies, lass.  I tried.  I never was too good a liar."

 

* * *

Of course when Dorian finally wandered in, it was with a whistle and a ridiculous swagger.

Hair slicked back, with a nauseatingly familiar smirk plastered all over his face, he entered the dungeon, and all the finery and baubles on his cloak jangled with every step.  Brielle knew he was coming as soon as she heard the first three notes of the stupid tune he was whistling.  By the time he arrived before her cell door, she'd pulled herself upright to face him.

Dorian smiled, sweeping his heels together and bowing deeply before he drew himself up with a flourish.  "Miss Brielle Bellarous.  Pleased to see you, as always.  Or—is it Senior Enchanter Bellarous, these days?  I left Minrathous in a bit of a hurry, you know, and I haven't quite kept up with the happenings since then."

She looked a little cross-eyed, and held her head at a funny angle, staring more  _ past _ him than  _ at _ him.  Dorian frowned; hopefully Leliana hadn't been knocking her about  _ too _ much.

"I'll take that as a yes," he announced.  "Senior Enchanter Bellarous.  I like it.  Rolls off the tongue nicely."

Brielle blinked.  She was looking at him now, though now her face had tightened all over, into a rather unattractive, puckered grimace.

He waited for her to say something.  Tapped his foot.  Nothing.  Then he tried out his best falsetto: "'Well hello to you too, Dorian, quite good to see you again.'  You  _ do _ recognize me, yes?"

No answer.  She pressed her back against the wall, slouching like a panther.

"It's the silent treatment, then?  Really?  I thought maybe you'd be glad to have someone to chat with, particularly such a dazzling conversationalist as myself, it's hardly like you have many other options around here.  Let's see, there's—" Dorian turned his head to squint down the hall, toward the other dozen or so cells, most of them empty.  "There's a rat over there, an awful black stain of  _ something _ covering half the wall, and—oh, my, I haven't seen him in a while.  Hullo, Samson—"

"What do you want?" Brielle cut in at last, every word clipped.  Samson, if he was even awake, said nothing.

Dorian grinned.  "Ah, patience, Brielle, one cannot skip the exchanging of pleasantries."  He glanced down the hall again—one small window, shoved into the far corner.  "I suppose it's a bit tricky to discuss the weather, though, given your present vantage point."

It was too fun to tease, really.  She'd always been such a prickly girl.  She glowered at him from where she sat, and he wondered if her glare could  _ possibly _ become any more murderous than it already was.

"Gossip, perhaps?" he tried.  "How's our dear old first enchanter doing?  Serus must be getting up there in years.  Does she still wear those ridiculous hats everywhere?  You know the ones, the ones magicked to change colors in the light, with all the trinkets hanging off them.  You know, the way the Dalish get little scraps of glass and beads and wear them as relics.  Adorable, really"

Oh, yes—Brielle's glare certainly  _ could _ get more murderous.  Right now, she was clenching one hand so tightly around her arm that Dorian thought she  _ must _ be imagining it strangling  _ him _ instead.

"Speaking of which—I must commend you, Brielle.  All the years I knew you, I don't think I ever saw you touch a comb once, and there were all those  _ grays _ and  _ browns _ you wore, simply—eaugh.  And yet, here you are getting with the fashions at last.  Your hair's much nicer with this sensible trim.  Unfortunately, your winter-cloak was a bit worse for the wear—"

"Don't  _ patronize _ me, Dorian—"

"—but you see," Dorian continued, his voice suddenly thunderous, "trying to  _ kill _ me seems to be  _ quite _ the fashionable desire in Tevinter these days."

And now, now Dorian had a glare furious enough to match Brielle's.  His good humor had vanished in an eyeblink, and now he loomed over her, grown tall with fury, looking at her like she was some blighted rotting darkspawn, something to kick and spit on.  She could feel the swell of mana around him; the edges of his hair twitched with it.  Brielle held his eyes, but only just.  She'd seen Dorian indignant before, and mock-outraged, but never truly  _ angry _ , and the contrast was more unnerving than anything she'd ever seen in the Fade.

"I've had to kill a great many fashionable fools from Tevinter, ever since I came here, as it turns out," he said, spitting every word.  "Some of them were quite  _ clever _ fools, even.  But clearly not clever enough, if they were letting themselves be lured in by that juvenile Venatori whinging about the 'old days'."

One of his hands twitched, unconsciously, twisting a little spark and a bit of Fade around it.  

"It's all become a bit wearying, to be honest.  Not the killing—I'd happily torch ten thousand Venatori if that's what it takes to rid Tevinter of this sickness.  But, day in, day out, all you see is the cretins.  One starts to wonder if the cretins are all that's left."

"And then here you come along"—his voice sharpened—" the cleverest of all of them, having suddenly gotten all  _ fashionable _ .  If anyone had asked me a week ago about you, I'd have said you were as likely to join the Venatori as you were to be living on the moon.  And yet here we are."

Dorian's first flash of anger had startled her, but now she regarded him coolly.  Thunder can only startle with lightning's first strike.  She waited for him to rumble further, and then realized he was waiting for her.  She licked her lips.  "Yes, Dorian.  Here we are."

He sighed.  The smirk on her face was insufferable, but he'd spent his anger and now all that was left was that weariness.  He took a step backward.  Raked a restless hand through his hair.  He wasn't here to satisfy his own temper, anyway; he could try a different tack.  So he cleared his throat, and recited, in a strangely-lilting tenor:

        " __ Why are you to come upon us alone,  
_         Wearing the armor of our most hated foe,  
_ __         when I can see you are no man of the legion?"

Brielle frowned, straining to recall: "From the Chant of Light?"

Dorian nodded.  "The Aegis to Shartan, if you'll recall."

She gave him a rather uncharacteristically stupefied stare.  Perhaps poetry was a thing she'd been too long without.  And a dungeon hardly seemed the place for it; it felt a little strange even to Dorian.

Then, after a long pause, she swallowed hard and dropped her gaze.

"Brielle, please."

She wasn't glaring at him anymore, at least, but now she was staring at her feet like some kind of  _ child _ —the way they'd mutter and duck their head when you asked them  _ do you know what you've done _ or  _ did you steal that candy from your sister _ or any other inane grievance.

Dorian would've been annoyed, except, at just that moment his mind seized on a wild idea that seemed just so temptingly plausible.  Of course, of course, why didn't he think of it before: "Is it some sort of mind-magic that's holding you?  Or changed you?"  

She jerked her head up.

He met her eyes, stared deep, as if he'd be able to scry the answer there.  "Valerius is quite a proficient blood mage, after all, everyone knows what he did to that poor Lucanas boy, could hardly be blamed if if you succumbed to a spell like—"

"I trained in the same circle as you," Brielle said, voice sharp.  "If some petty blood mage could have corrupted me, they would have done so long before now."

Dorian sighed, but he smiled, too.  "Well, at least you  _ sound _ like the Brielle I know."

"And  _ you _ sound like the Dorian I know," she flung back.

Dorian winced, though he wasn't sure why.  It just sounded rather  _ nastier _ when she said it.

The moment passed, and Dorian allowed himself an airy shrug: "Was just an idea.  It's a bit hard to imagine any kind of mind-magic could be so potent over such a distance, anyway."

Brielle's scowl didn't fade one iota.

"Though, what's also hard to imagine—" it was shocking Dorian had resisted talking about this so far, really, no harm in bringing it up  _ now _ , he simply  _ had _ to "—it's hard to imagine that a Dreamer could exist in my time, and yet here you are.  Dreamer Bellarous, first in five generations."

He'd expected maybe she'd perk up at that, preen a little; it  _ was _ something to preen about.  But she didn't do that—and didn't snap at him either—just looked away, fidgeting with her hands.

"It  _ is _ remarkable, you know," he said.  "I have a thousand questions.  Does anyone  _ know _ ?  Have you always been able to do it?  And surely—such a rare gift—you must've gotten it from somewhere.  Were your parents Dreamers, perhaps? I'm not familiar with the Bellarous lineage but—"

"My parents were soporati."

She could make the most banal statements sting like a slap to the face.  Dorian was remembering why she'd always seemed rather friendless. 

He cleared his throat and set his shoulders further back.  "Right, well.  Still, maybe some magic in the lineage somewhere, just many generations back, who knows, it's not important.  But, when you enter the Fade—is it an act of will? or does it happen naturally, whenever you sleep? does using lyrium make it easier, like with the rest of us, or is it merely a distraction?  There's an old legend about Julius the Wise, bringing things made of dreamstuff into our world —I mean, perhaps not so different from our venture into the Fade, though I didn't have the sense to bring back more than a few trinkets—ah, I haven't even told you about that yet, it would have been  _ wonderful _ if it were not also an absolute disaster—"

She'd stopped wringing her hands; now they were just clutched together in one ugly fist, and her jaw was set hard.  He offered a sheepish grin: "Forgive my enthusiasm.  I've torn through every book, grimoire, and scroll I could find here in Skyhold, but it turns out religious crusaders don't tend to keep their archives particularly well-stocked, despite my best efforts.  What wouldn't I give for an hour at the library at Minrathous!  But firsthand sources are always best.  If you'd be so obliging."

Her jaw was set harder now—she was hunched a little, as though in pain.

"Silent again.  Hm."

She didn't cry out, though, didn't moan.  Maybe she just had a particularly pained-looking grimace.  "Are you alright?" he tried.  Then, a little more quietly, as though he was afraid the templar down the hall was listening a little too closely: "I can't help you if you won't talk to me."

"I don't—stop looking at me.  Just.  Please go."  Brielle said "please" but it was the most hateful "please" Dorian had ever heard.  Spat the word out like spoiled wine.   _ It's not like I  _ made _ you haul here and try to murder me _ , he thought, but bit his tongue on the retort.

She was back to fidgeting with her hands, staring at the wall to her left.  He couldn't see the expression on her face anymore, not at that angle, though did he really need to?  Hadn't he really heard enough?

So he turned to leave, and that's when it happened.  Quick.  Too quick for the templars to rush forward; too quick for Dorian to react.  He felt the quickening, the surge of mana, like a gale battering through a broken storm-door in one great surge.  There was a mighty yell, and a roar of magefire, and then green—bright, bright green, subsuming everything all at once, so bright he was blinded.  The yell and the magefire-roar melded into a whole shuddering howl.  By the time he'd thrown his hands in front of him, he'd been slammed into the stone wall behind him and, after a last bright  _ crack _ , he didn't hear anything at all.

 

* * *

The chat Dorian had with Cullen after  _ that _ little stunt was  _ fun _ .

_ Fun _ in this context, of course, meaning any given combination of  _ frustrating _ ,  _ nasty _ , and  _ explosive _ .  Dorian had scarcely come to, in Skyhold's infirmary, when Cullen stormed in.  Had he been  _ waiting _ to spring on him?  The commander's face was pale and wrinkled with rage, all "I'm the commander of this Inquisition and I say she's hanging at sunset" and "outrageous the danger you've put my men in" and "I've been reading this Dreamer nonsense and it's worse than I thought" and "I've got a tremendous stick up my arse"—alright, maybe Dorian invented that last part.

But Cullen  _ was _ fuming, and making quite a fuss about it, and  _ apparently _ he had decided Dorian was the person to fume  _ at _ .  Andraste only knew why.  All  _ Dorian _ had wanted to do was guzzle either the first bottle of healing potion, or the first jug of spirits, that was handed to him, so he could down it all at once and pass out again.  But instead, he had to force himself to stay roused, lest the fair commander explode and get all Kirkwall-y or whatnot.

"Cullen," he begged, "a little  _ louder _ , please, I think there's a few sparrows in the Anderfels who couldn't quite hear."

"Good, they  _ should _ hear."

Dorian just barely stifled a laugh.  Even in his groggy state, the man sounded ridiculous.  "Refresh me, commander.  I've been under the weather.  What's Brielle done now?  Torched our grains, pillaged our fields?"

Cullen looked at Dorian as if he were a bit daft.  "You've been out for three days.  You should be dead.  You were lucky."

"I gathered that much.  Good thing I'm of a naturally lucky stock."  Dorian tried to make a little gesture, and winced—even lifting his arm burned and ached.

He sat up stiffly, so not as to aggravate anything further.  "So, nothing in the meantime?  It's just me she thwaped about?"  Cullen's silence was its own affirmation.  Dorian clucked his tongue.  "Might need to start putting some of those taverngoers to death, too, then.  I've been knocked about in my share of drunken scraps there, too."

"It's not the same and you know it," Cullen snapped.  "We've got to keep three templars round the clock just to control her, now.  It's a waste of resources at the least.  And if we can't enforce order here in Skyhold, even—"

Leliana was there, they both noticed at once, though when exactly she had gotten there, probably no one could tell.  Her eyes seemed a bit sunken, but still she offered a protest: "The information she has on the Imperium could be valuable—"

—which earned a quick tongue-lashing.  " _ Could _ be valuable?  Or  _ will  _ be valuable?  Valuable as my men's lives?  Valuable as the integrity of Skyhold itself?  Valuable as our  _ mission _ , from which all of this seems a rather extravagant distraction?"

Leliana was silent.  Dorian shot her a glare.   _ Et tu, Leliana? _

"Andraste's sake," Cullen went on, "she's nearly succeeded  _ twice _ , I've put  _ dogs _ down for less—"

"Cullen, the moment she so much breathes on anyone else you can—'put her down', as you so vulgarly phrased it," Dorian said.  "Really now, has she laid a finger on anyone else?  Are your men so jumpy as to ignore plain facts?  Surely you can convince your men this  _ one _ boogeyman won't jump out in the night at them?"

Cullen whirled on Dorian, then, nostrils flaring, with a scowl so fierce it almost turned into a maddened grin.  Dorian half-expected him to draw his sword and plunge it into his chest right there and then.  He would've earned it, completely; that bit about boogeymen was quite over the line.  But Cullen had always been the better man.  After a long, furious silence, during which his right hand teased the hilt of his blade, and his left hand gripped Dorian's arm so tightly he thought it'd snap off, Cullen finally turned away with a snarl and stormed out the door.  "One more time, and she  _ goes _ ," he shouted over his shoulder.  "No discussion, no argument."

Dorian would've argued, of course.  Just for the sake of arguing.  But just then some attendant finally came by, with some wonderful bottle of who-cared-what-it-was—he swallowed its contents in one go, and blissfully passed out for another day and night.

It would be another two days after that before he could walk again.  Rather nasty spellwork she'd gotten up to.  The sheer force of the blast had knocked him against the wall, apparently headfirst, if the unsightly bump on his head was anything to go by.  And even accounting for the bludgeoning and the burning, which on their own required some of Skyhold's best healers, there was still another set of wounds—because, dear sweet Andraste, that girl was clever as ever.  She'd imbued that magefire with some bit of darktouch that kept it searing beneath the skin, the pain just as vivid as when she'd first cast.  It kept burning even when the outside blistering healed, even when all the burn-salve in the world had been slathered on it—it continued, dark and slow and aching, on and on, running in rivers within his flesh, in a way no spell could fix.

It was quite cleverly crafted, really—but vile, from a vile school of magic altogether.  The last time he'd seen something like that, it hadn't even been Venatori work, but from one of the shadow-guilds he'd snooped around in.  Once.  Briefly.

That was back in Minrathous, and that guild had been a bloody hard lot to track down.  They were the sort of mages you slipped word to when you needed help with something particularly wretched.  A novel poison, unique enough to make its research-provenance quite untraceable.  Or a spell to inflict one of those long wasting-sicknesses on someone, eat them slowly from the inside out.  Or assistants for a particularly risky blood ritual, say, when a father wanted to change his son—

Not that he'd checked on that in particular or anything.  Of course.

Suffice to say he was not in the cheeriest of moods when he'd finally recovered enought to walk.  (The last remnants of the magefire still had him clutching his side from time to time.)

And it was with precisely this uncheery mood that he went straight from his bed in the infirmary to the cells below.  Two hundred steps from the high tower to the underdeep, his limbs screaming protest the whole way, before he could finally—blessedly—stop before her cell.

A templar stood there, with the cool flat of his blade pressed against the back of Brielle's neck.  She was splayed in the far corner of the cell, twitching strangely, like a restless dreamer of some foul dream.  He could see the faint blue shimmer of the steady drain of mana.  It was a bit of stopgap trickery the templars had devised, apparently—quite like a righteous strike, but low-grade and long-term.  Each templar could keep it up for about two hours at a time.  Which meant they traded shifts often, obnoxiously labor-intensive, but short of tranquility it was about the only way to keep a mage from their magic.

Couldn't feel too good for Brielle, though.  "Pavus," she gasped, her eyes not quite finding his as she strained to see him, then flinched and shuddered and looked away.

"Have we gotten the last bit of murder out of our system?  Shall we behave properly now?"

"Pavus."  Her voice was ragged, faint, her eyes clenched shut.

"I'm afraid my templar friend here needs a 'yes' before he lets up on the mana drain—are we done with the murdering?"

He waited.  Crossed his arms, tapped one impatient foot.  She simply lie there—twitching sometimes, eyes clenched shut always, as though pained by the light.  Her head wasn't even turned toward him.  After a few minutes the awkwardness was becoming unbearable and, if Dorian were honest with himself, rather nerve-wracking—had she gone mad, somehow, cut off from her magic for so long, reduced to some mindless babbler, couldn't have  _ that _ , now—

—but at just that moment, she finally writhed to face him, a precious half-second of furious clarity in her eyes, and coughed up a word like bile: "Yes."

Dorian nodded, and at once the templar withdrew his blade.  The blue shimmer faded, and Brielle flexed and clenched her fingers before collapsing again, too exhausted to be ashamed of how she drooled on the floor as she did so.  "Maker," she breathed.

Dorian paused a moment, to let her catch her breath, but his scowl didn't soften.  "Try that again and my templar friends could keep that up for a far longer while.  That was just two days; I wonder how it'd feel after a week.  Or a month, or longer—think you'd be able to cast so much as a spark, after that?"

She looked up at that, finally—pulling her head just barely off the floor, stricken and shaking.  He realized at once why—that threat sounded too close to  _ tranquil _ , and for all her present lack of self-preservation even Brielle would fear that fate.

He hadn't meant to sound so ominous but, now that he had, he realized he didn't care, feeling a savage righteousness surging in him:  "Good, now you're  _ listening _ , at least," he spat.  He was right at the bars of her cell, now.  She scrambled, and managed to pull herself upright by bracing against the wall, but even the mere act of tilting her head back to face him left her panting.  She met his gaze for only a moment before she crumpled again.

"Do you realize how many times I've had to talk Cullen out of just offing you now?  You know how many men in Skyhold call me blue-blood and traitor, just because I raised my voice to stop him?  All that, just because I wanted to give you the chance to explain yourself, and when I do that you try and kill me  _ again _ !  So much for  _ circulus non scindet _ , eh, Brielle?"

He paused.  She met his gaze and blinked a few times, puzzled.  Had he expecting an apology?  Stupid.

Brielle said, "But you left the Circle."

"And  _ you _ tromped across a continent to kill me!" Dorian shouted.  With just one gesture, he could have the Templar at it again—have the blade to her throat, draining the mana from her skin.  He could watch her twitch and sputter, half-blind and half-deaf, as long as he liked.  He almost did—he stopped just short, clenching his hand into a fist instead, and closed his mouth on the command he'd been about to say.

Brielle watched Dorian make that fist—and she seemed to shrink back a bit, her posture now muted.  "Yes, I did do that."

Dorian sighed.  "If you've some personal grudge against me, I've no idea what I could've done to offend so, but I'd like to hear it.  It's all feeling rather too personal for some rote assassin job, or whatever it is you've been telling Leliana."

Brielle looked each way, and then down, as if a convenient trapdoor might've opened up for her to dive into.  Finding none, she raked one shaking hand through her hair, and then another, each time so roughly he could hear the little hair-strands snapping.  Then she swept her hair all back at once and stared hard at the ceiling.  And at last this wild, savage girl seemed familiar,  _ truly _ familiar—she had a way of holding her head, just so, when she was thinking hard and true; she bit her lip when she did it.  He'd seen it often in the Circle, when she was contemplating some new bit of sorcery.

He let her think. He was good at waiting.

"You're very..." she tried, and then,  "It's not..."  Finally she inhaled deeply and managed: "Valerius.  I assume you've met him?  He's not the personal sort.  But he is very... his personality is very  _ specific _ , it's—I mean,  _ relentless _ is maybe the word—"

"Let's not be speaking ill of the dead, now," Dorian cut in, unable to resist the quip.  "I deal with them a bit too much for that."

Brielle blinked and stared.  "What do you mean?"

"Ahh, a joke's no good if you have to explain it.  You'll recall necromancy was my specialty when we were in Minrathous, so, you know, dealing with the dead, ha ha very funny—"

"No, I mean,  _ who _ is dead?" Brielle asked, her voice thrumming with a new urgency.  "Valerius?  You're saying Valerius is dead?"

"I guess Leliana hadn't told you."  Oops.  Maybe that had been intentional.  Hopefully he hadn't mussed the spymaster's plans overmuch.  "Yes, he, ah—he perished in a bit of an accident."

Brielle heard the funny little lilt he put on "accident."  Pursed her lips, tugged on her hair.  She wasn't a fool.  "An accident," she repeated, with the same little lilt.  "So he's dead?  You're sure?  Where's the—is there proof, is this some ploy, who did it?  Was it Leliana?"

She was still sickly-pale but in all other respects she was wholly revived.  In an eyeblink, she went from mutely huddled in a corner, to clutching the bars of her cell, face pressed into them, scrambling—and failing—to pull herself onto her feet.  For a moment Dorian wondered if she and Valerius been lovers—completely mad, he knew, but the gleam in her eye was so frantic, and her voice had spiked up five pitches.  "What of his wife?  His sons?  What's happened to his estate?"

"Goodness, and  _ now _ you're suddenly all chatty—"

"Dorian,  _ tell me _ ," she snarled, an impudence that would've been punished by any other captor.

But Dorian was too taken aback to take offense.  "I assume it all went to that sapless son of his," he said dumbly, thinking as he spoke.  "I mean.  I was mostly concerned with Valerius himself, seeing as he was the one who wouldn't shut up about killing me.  That was before I knew he had accomplices, of course."

Dorian wasn't even sure she heard him.  She was babbling now: "Leliana kept... She asked me so much about Valerius, I thought...  I thought you wanted information to, you know, get at him personally, but if he's dead, then..."

Yes—clearly, Leliana had been intentionally holding this little revelation back.  Stupid him.  He'd have to apologize later.

Brielle muttered a bit longer, all thinking aloud, but eventually she stopped and turned to face Dorian again: "What happens to me next?"

Dorian cleared his throat.  "Assuming you are, indeed, done with the murdering, well, you're subject to the Inquisitor's judgment, upon his return.  He's out somewhere near the Western Approach at the moment, if I recall, so it'll be a bit before he can render justice and all that."

"Justice," she repeated, hollow.  She shuddered.  "I'd sooner take the accident."

Privately, Dorian agreed with that assessment.  But it was out of his hands, he told himself.

Brielle swallowed, and mustered what boldness she could.  "What do  _ you _ want from me, then, Dorian?  What do you really want?  Are you here to taunt? to gloat? to lord your last victory over me?"

"I never called you my enemy," Dorian said, voice soft  "And I had no idea you had called me yours.  What happened to you, Brielle?"

She fidgeted with her hands again, the way she had last time, just before she threw that brilliant-terrible blast of magefire.  Dorian flinched, all instinct, and threw a barrier up with all the force he could muster.  But she went no further, just fidgeted with those empty little murderous motions, glaring at him all the while.

He let the barrier drop.  Laughed coldly.  "That's how it is, then?  No talk, just itches for murder?  At least Alexius  _ tried _ to justify his mad scheme to me.  And at least  _ his _ scheme smacked of some cleverness."

"Dorian, I—"

"No, that's enough.  Goodbye, Brielle," Dorian called over his shoulder.  He threw his left hand backwards and, with a gesture, sent a wave of force at her, hard enough to throw her against the far wall of her cell, and he heard her groan as he led himself out.

* * *

"So.  What did that Vint do to you?"

Brielle sighed and rolled her eyes.

It had been at least an hour since Dorian had left.  She'd been rather hoping that Samson hadn't heard their little tiff, but, of  _ course _ he had, and of  _ course _ he let her know it.  He heard everything, and jeered at everything, like some myopic, taunting geist.  For all she knew, he  _ was _ a geist; it wasn't like she'd ever seen the man.

"You there, girlie?"

No use putting it off. "Yes?  Would I be anywhere else?"

Samson chuckled.  "That Dorian fellow.  Who is he?  And what'd he do to you?"

Brielle fidgeted with a hangnail, dangling from her finger.  She was debating what answer might bore Samson the most, bore him enough to make him stop prying.  Not that that had ever happened before, of course.  "We go a ways back," she said at last.  "That's all."

"You go a ways back,  _ and _ ?" he pressed.  " _ Something's _ gotten a bee in your bonnet.  Plain as day.  Otherwise I imagine you'd be glad to see a fellow northerner around."

_ Tevinter doesn't work like that _ , she thought, but stayed silent.  She focused on the hangnail—peeled back one of the corners until it was hanging from her finger by just the barest thread, a thread burrowed deep under the skin on the side of her nail.  She could just ignore Samson, for once.   _ Who _ Dorian was wasn't the important thing, anyway, so much as  _ what _ he was, and it wasn't Samson's business anyway.

When no answer came, Samson'  _ hmmm _ ed loudly into the air.  "Then that Valerius fellow must be the sort of man worth dying for."

For a moment, Brielle froze.  Made sure she'd heard Samson properly.  Then, with a sudden fury, she yanked the hangnail off, leaving a bit of blood spattered on the floor, and whirled—strode up to her cell-door, pressed her face against the bars, and strained to see Samson, wherever he was, to look him in the eyes.  Useless, as always; all she could see was the hall.  It was stupid, to let him rile her, and some part of her knew that, but all that the rest of her could think was: dying for  _ him _ ? dying for a  _ magister _ ? by what right, what moronic reason, would this man assume such a thing—

She shouted down the hall, loud enough to echo:  "Then what is it you're dying for, old man?"

Samson's answer was immediate.  "So me and my mine could die at their best."  His voice wasn't defensive, like she'd expected, but instead was bright and eager, as though he'd been waiting all this time for her to ask.  "So we could make a stand against a sick and blighted order.  So that those—"  Then, a hacking fit seized him, and Brielle squirmed to hear the awful phlemy squelching sounds of his lungs.  After some minutes, the hacking faded, and he went into one of his flat, blunted bouts of laughter,  _ heh heh heh heh heh _ .  "Just hope you can say something samelike," he said.  "About this Valerius.  That's all."

She wanted to kick something.  She smothered that urge, but instead settled to pick at the little scrap of hangnail that was left, a tiny stub poking up from the little pool of blood.  She picked at the little scrap til she'd torn every last bit away, with some of her own flesh.  Then she scraped and gnawed at her cuticles until those bled, too.

What an obnoxious man.  He didn't see, couldn't see.  She had plans of her own.

* * *

On the tenth day of her capture, in that dark windowless room where she met with the Spymaster, after—how many minutes? or hours?—there, after however many questions and answers and silences and sighs, Brielle whispered her first and only request of the Sister: please ask Dorian to come visit me.

Leliana could hardly reject so reasonable a request.  Neither could Dorian, nonplussed as he was by the invitation: "I've only  _ just _ gotten my mustache back the way it was  _ before _ she torched half the thing off."

Leliana shrugged at his indignation.  "I only told her I would ask.  You may do as you will."

Dorian allowed himself to fume a bit longer (nobody could do righteous indignation half as well as he could, and it did feel so  _ good _ to be justly annoyed), and then set about deciding whether to visit her before or  _ after _ a visit to the tavern.

Pros of the first option: having a few pints beforehand would certainly make her more tolerable.  Enough ale could make just about  _ anyone _ tolerable.

Cons of said option: drinking was hardly fun unless done in excess, and visiting a twice-would-be murderer while struggling to walk straight seemed unwise.

He at last opted for the third option, a compromise: head down there first thing in the morning.  Being half-awake and bleary-eyed was a  _ bit _ like being drunk, in that he didn't notice half of what people were saying, and had to make everyone to repeat the other half, but he'd still manage some spellcasting in a pinch.

He was still wiping the sleep from his eyes when he got to her cell.  His hair was all mussed, and his mustache was in a sorry state—dimly, he wondered if she realized how rare and awful it was to see a Dorian in any state other than impeccable.

She scrambled upright as soon as she saw him.  "Hello, Dorian."  The forced brightness in her voice rang like cracked china.

"Using my first name, now," he muttered.  "Aren't you getting chummy."

He'd meant it as a joke.  But Brielle dipped her head and looked away as though scolded.  She was fidgeting with her hands—though it wasn't the pre-casting viper-twitch she'd had when she was working up the nerve to kill.  This was more the fretful hand-wringing of a nervous child.

"Come now, don't be cringing like that.  You summoned me here, yes?  What's on your mind?"

It took her a couple tries to start.  "Well, Dorian, I'd, um...  You see, I was thinking..."  She had to close her eyes before she was able to get anything coherent out.  "Dorian, I was wondering how much sway you have over this Inquisitor of yours.  Is everyone subject to his judgment?  Might there be exceptions?  Can you—can you do pardons, or some such?"

Dorian arched one cool eyebrow.  Asking for favors wasn't exactly criminal, though it did seem a bit gauche, given her record.  He kept his answer vague: "Like any gentleman, I wield a great many influences, my dear Miss Bellarous."

She'd stopped fidgeting with her hands—now she was clutching her left wrist with her right hand, hard, as though bracing herself.  "If you could—if you  _ would _ —if you have the power to free me.  Then, if you free me, I swear I'll never hurt you or anyone in the Inquisition again.  I swear it, by—by everything.  I'd even—you could take a phylactery, if you wanted, and if I ever touched any of you again, you could come kill me yourself.  I could tell you—about Valerius.  What he's plotting—was plotting.  What I know about the magisters, the Venatori, the—"

"Leliana seems to have gotten a great deal of that already," he cut in.  Brielle winced.

He waited for something else.  Surely that wasn't all she'd called him down here for.  Surely she'd realized how little she had to offer.  But she looked abashed, worrying an anxious hand through her hair.  Maybe that was it, maybe that was all she had, and good riddance.

Brielle swallowed.  She hadn't expected the brusqueness; she never was good with people.  "I'll give you... I can...  Anything you want, Dorian, by Andraste's grace, if ever you've felt a—felt a thing for me in your life, then now is the time to do this thing for me."

What a strange sort of appeal.  It was true he'd admired her from afar, but the way he'd admire—a falcon, or a wild dog, fierce scrappy creatures.  You wanted them always wild and unmastered, and you slept better knowing they were out there somewhere.  But they'd never been closer than arm's length, and neither had she.

Brielle couldn't tell if he was considering the offer or not.  She didn't want to take chances.  Warily eying the templar down the hall, she switched to soft Tevene: "Find a night when the guard is lax, and my cell could  _ happen _ to be unlocked.  I'd be free and it'd all be an accident and no one would be any the wiser."

Dorian stilled, and tilted his head as if to listen more closely.

Brielle went on: "I do know people now, Dorian.  I mean—you know people too, of course, but I know some you don't, powerful people—even if you're not going back to Tevinter, I'm sure they could—"

"When Leliana said you wanted to see me," Dorian replied, in the stiff harsh common tongue, "I didn't realize you planned to goad me into treason."

The templars down the hall, on either side of Dorian, started at that.  They moved to join him, but he waved them off, never looking away from Brielle, fixing her with his harshest glare.  Brielle shrank back, stammering in common tongue again, "I-I-I-I didn't mean it that way.  I only m-meant if you, if you wanted a way, I mean—"

"Leliana says you did it for money," Dorian snapped.  "And she believes you.  I didn't want to.  But, Maker, listen to yourself—gloating about  _ who  _ you know and the  _ riches _ you stand to gain—it's the same tired tune I've heard a hundred times, sung by the same sort of singer I've killed a hundred times."

His voice was more heated than he'd expected, and only growing moreso.  What had Tevinter become, when even the proud wild dogs were letting themselves be collared and tamed by vacuous promises of finer things?  He turned to storm out, because why had he even come here in the first place, what had he expected, he had better things to do, like finding himself a proper drink, or maybe five—

But then Brielle blurted out, in Tevene: "I can teach you to Dream."

It was maybe the only thing in the world that she could've said to make him stop.  It shouldn't have.  Even as he let his hand linger overlong on the door handle, he was thinking  _ no no no no no, keep walking, she'll say anything if she thinks it'll make you stop _ .  How often had he derided other mages for the very same thing?  Playing with magic they didn't understand, taking guidance from murderers and charlatans?  It wasn't blood, certainly, but it was the natural opposite, and like so many things in life, magic was almost most dangerous at the farthest ends, at the poles.  

His eyes flickered, anxious, from the door to the floor.  A templar caught his eye, tilted his chin upward in question.  Dorian shook his head vaguely, still planted in front of that door.  He knew he shouldn't turn around.  Looking at her would be too great a concession.  So he spoke to the door in front of him, in loud, clear Tevene: "Impossible."

He could hear the quick, wheezy exhale of breath she'd been holding, but he didn't see her face.  If he had, he would've seen how it lit up with triumph.  She spoke quickly, and quietly, not because she was worried about the guard overhearing, but because otherwise her excitement would be too obvious.  "No.  It's possible.  I could do it— _ can _ do it.  I c-can show you how to shape the Fade, reach through it, reach into other minds, and touch and—and  _ touch _ .  But only—only if you'll spare my life, if you'll let me free after."

He turned his neck to look at her, finally, over his shoulder, his face fixed as stone.  "The last record of a Dreamer was a hundred fifteen years ago.  If it could be so easily taught, I'm certain someone would've figured it out in the intervening century or so."

Brielle snorted and rolled her eyes.  

Something prickled uncomfortably on the back of Dorian's neck.  All his life, all corners of magic had been his to hold, nothing was outside his reach—and yet here was a thing that some lowly laetean held, a power that "everyone" knew was long-extinct, except apparently "everyone" was not  _ everyone _ .  Because, instead of acting like the blessed winner of a cosmic lottery, here she was rolling her eyes as though it were some common frippery.  Dorian didn't much like being left out.

"Who else?" he ventured, low.

"Magister Titus."

Dorian grunted.  Not bad so far.  If a Magister really  _ did _ have the power—if Brielle wasn't just making up lies—well, either way, Titus was a good choice.  Gruff and silent and ancient, with the kind of deep magic that could make mountains tremble.  Likely the only man in the Magisterium that no one dared confront.

"Magister Fraun," she added.  And then Dorian burst out laughing.

"Yes, him!" she shouted, but it was too late; he was already doubled over.  Andraste bless, he'd never met a more mousy magister his whole life.  Stammered terribly whenever he had to speak in public, couldn't manage a bit of smalltalk to save his life, and had an unfortunate tendency to sweat profusely all year long.  "You—you can't... can't be serious," Dorian managed between gasps of laughter.

But of course that just made Brielle become obstinate.  "I know why you're—why you're laughing, he hasn't got charisma, all Tevinter knows it.  But he's  _ powerful _ , Dorian.  He's more powerful than me, maybe more than Titus, even, and he—he must know it, too, or he never would've let me see him in the Fade."

Forcing the last of his laughter down with a few ragged hiccups, Dorian could finally look at Brielle straight-faced again, and he saw that her demeanor had changed wholly.  Before she'd been stiff-spined and bold.  Now, she was frowning, with the faraway expression of someone fretting over old history, knotted with problems unsolved and unsolvable.

"You—you saw him, then?" Dorian asked (his straight face nearly collapsed again; he scowled to save it).

She nodded.  "When I saw Magister Titus, that was my accident.  It's not—not smart for Dreamers to let each other know who they are—but Fraun, he made sure I knew who he was,  _ what _ he was, what he could do."  Her eyes had a hunted look.  "How else do you think someone like him has held onto their seat for so long?"

Dorian's knowledge of Magisterial politics was getting a bit dated by now, after so much time in Ferelden.  But he remembered at least one rival of Fraun's, once, found dead in their home, "natural" causes, which everyone assumed meant poison.  But poison could leave traces, witnesses, accomplices.  What if he had another way, a cleaner way...?

Dorian realized then he wasn't just  _ wanting _ to believe, anymore.  He believed her.

"And I heard a rumor of a little elven boy in the Free Marches, though I doubt he's still alive."  Brielle was fussing with the hem of her cloak.  "I suspect the talent kills many young."

He waited for the rest of the list.  When the pause went overlong, he realized that that was all there was.  He let out a quick sigh, as though he'd been holding his breath.  "Fine, then, suppose there are other Dreamers.  And then suppose you can teach me.  Still sounds a bit trappish, doesn't it?  Third time's a charm when it comes to your little assassination-game?  How can I know this isn't just a trick?"

Perhaps she was dimmer than Dorian had given her credit for; she just gawped as though he'd suggested adding two and two to get five.  "But if you die in your sleep  _ now _ , everyone will know it was me."

"If you'd killed me with your ridiculous fireball, everyone would've known that  _ anyway _ , and it didn't stop you then."

Brielle bit her lower lip, a flush of shame coloring her cheeks.  "You never told me Ma—Magister Valerius was dead.  That's important.  That changes things."

Dorian crossed his arms.  "Bit of a shaky story."

She didn't have an answer for that.

He should've walked away then.  What more was there to discuss?  Nothing but impossible assurances; nothing but temptations.

But Brielle had gathered herself, now.  He saw a rare light flash in her eyes, and when she spoke now, it was soft, earnest, and confident; the confidence of a card-player tilting their hand to reveal a perfect flush.  "The feel of the place is like nothing else, Dorian."  She held out a hand as though she were touching it now, and a tiny laugh startled from her.  "You know it is.  You saw it, you  _ felt _ it; I brought you to Minrathous.  Me, I did that.  And not just Minrathous.   _ My _ Minrathous."  She was smiling.  He hadn't seen her smile once, this whole time in Skyhold, not until now.  "And I built it all, Dorian, all by Dreaming, all by just—by my will, my thoughts, my visions made real.  Not even spirits, not even demons, have that power."

She was speaking so quickly now that it was a little hard for Dorian to follow.  "You know the thing I loved most about spellcasting when I was a child?  How it puts—well, if you have the right frame of mind, anyway—how little friction there is between  _ wanting _ a thing to happen, and that thing  _ happening _ .  If that makes sense.  It's a thing that's true of almost nothing else in the world—swordsmen, they're fighting against their own stamina, and statesmen, they're wrestling with the broken language we've got to try and craft speeches and put ideas into people's minds—but spells just  _ are _ , they  _ become _ ."

She paused there, looking at him expectantly.  "Right," he said, nodding.  She had phrased it rather clumsily, of course magic required effort just like anything else—but he knew the feeling she was grasping at, the moment when you put yourself right upon that paper-thin precipice between nothing, and the glorious  _ something _ of a spell.

"Well, Dreaming's like that but a thousandfold.  There's barely incantations, barely words, barely anything, just—just dreamstuff.  When I had you in my Minrathous—even when you finally noticed the trickery, when it started falling in on itself—that only made it more incredible, didn't it?  Because you could see how bare, how  _ simple _ it was underneath.  And yet you saw the arches and buttresses and towers that they held! the  _ strength _ of them, a whole city on that bare frame.  Like—like the bones of an eagle.  Have you ever seen that?  I found one once, when I was little—great huge bird, wings longer than you are tall, and yet its bones were so light you could barely feel them.  Then you split one open and it's hollow inside, just little tendrils where the bone should be, thin as cobwebs.  That's how  _ everything _ in the Fade is built.  You learn how to hold and weave the tendrils and then it's—it's pure creation."

She paused to take a great breath; she'd been talking too fast to manage that.  And talking too much, she knew; she gave an abashed smile.  "But you know that.  You have inklings of it even now.  Twice you saw me in the Fade for what I really was—twice!  And I even saw you twist the Fade a bit, puckering the seams to try and protect you—"

"I was  _ scrambling _ ; I'm sure any two-bit mage could manage it—"

"Not any mage I've ever met."

"Then it was just luck—"

"No luck.  You have a knack."  Her voice rang with finality that struck him mute.  "And you're the only one I know who ever saw past one of my illusions.  Do you really doubt you could craft your own?  Have you ever failed to grasp a domain of magic before?  Will you let this be the first?"

"Idle taunts," Dorian demurred.

"Not taunts," she corrected, "they're not taunts if you know all the answers, and you do."

Dorian didn't know when he'd crossed back to her cell, knelt on one knee, leaned close to hear her better.  He only realized how close he was when Brielle finally drew in a last great breath and fell back against the wall, shoulders drooped, her eyes glittering with satisfaction.  Was he gawping?  In his mind he saw Minrathous, her Minrathous, he remembered it so well—he saw the bones of eagles, the bones of that great spire.

"And will you be promising me the moon and the stars and a pony, too?" he muttered, as if by some dull reflex; it was meant to sound sarcastic, but he couldn't quite manage the tone.

Brielle smiled again, a real smile.  "Think on it," she said, and gave a little wave, as if dismissing him.  Nevermind that she was still the prisoner, and he the freedman.  When she gave that little wave, he nodded and turned and walked away, demurely as any servant.

Almost as if sleepwalking—but perhaps not for long.


	4. Chapter 4

It was all too convenient that they both spoke Tevene.  Really, Dorian almost wished that they didn't share the tongue.  It made conspiring too easy.

He went to her cell just before sunrise, the hour when the air was at its most brisk, frosting his every breath.  He spoke as soon as he rounded the corner to her cell; he didn't want to lose his nerve.

"The commander," he said.  "He wouldn't like it."

Brielle didn't wake, so much as twitch and shudder, the motions of a moth waking to moonlight.  She twitched her neck, and unfurled her crinkled legs.  At length she pulled herself sitting upright, and the cell-bars cast a haggard shadow across her face, her hair hanging thready in front of her eyes.  Then she pulled herself next to the bars and glanced left, right.  A templar on each end of the hall eyed the pair of them warily, probably remembering the previous fireball incident.

Brielle was clever enough not to use names: "The commander?  You mean that blonde man?"

Dorian nodded.  "And if I tell our spymaster friend, she'll tell the commander, which leads back to the whole he-won't-like-it bit.  I could _not_ tell them, of course, but that seems an awful lot like going behind my own spymaster's back, which, of all the people in the Inquisition I could sneak around, seems the absolute worst pick.  And unlikely to succeed, to boot."

Brielle would make an awful Wicked Grace player; her eyes glittered with such naked eagerness.  "I would teach you in the Fade—not here," she said.  "And neither of them are mages.  They'd have no way of knowing what we do; they can't walk there.  And it'd be at night, when you'd be asleep anyway."  She paused, and tilted her head.  "But you know all that already, Dorian."

Indeed, he had known all that.  But hearing it from someone else made him feel a mite less culpable, even though Cullen was unlikely to see it that way.

He was quite certain that he knew the answer to his next question, too, and thus braced himself for disappointment: "Have you ever taught anyone else?  Or _tried_ to teach anyone else?"

"No, and no."

Dorian sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Brielle flipped her hair from her face with a sharp gesture and raised her voice: "But that doesn't mean I can't."

"Rather unempirical of you to say that, Brielle—"

"There was a time when use of a spirit blade was linked to bloodlines, wasn't there?  Only the Great Chosen Few for the Archon's Knight-Enchanter Guard?  Laughable to think of that, now, when every apprentice with half a wit can pull a saber from the Fade.  They just hadn't gotten the process _formalized_ properly."

The comparison was a keen one; Dorian had nearly forgotten that old superstition.

But Dreaming was different, surely.  Dreaming was linked to the blood of the Great Dragons, everyone knew that.   _Hang what "everyone" knows—_ he could hear her scoffing reply in his mind.  And it wouldn't be the first Tevinter truth that turned out to be mere fable.  He thought of Abelas at the Temple of Mythal.  Thought of the Black City.

The silence stretched too long.  Brille pressed: "Tonight, then?"

"Oh, I didn't say _that_.  I haven't agreed to a thing.  Just clarifying a few things, that's all."

She scowled, and he laughed.  Trying to up the ante without so much as an opening bid in play!  What fun she'd be at a card table.

* * *

Brielle had never had a teacher.  She had a tired tome with a thrice-broken spine, the only book she'd ever found that had more than four true sentences about the Fade in it.  She had Enchanter Calista, the only soul who knew about her Dreaming—and the only thing she could teach her was, _never tell another soul about your Dreaming_.  And she had her own fumbling experiments, and wrongheaded instincts, and mistakes—that was all.

So Brielle had no one to warn her not to stray too close to the Black City.  No one to tell her how to cloak herself from other Dreamers, or that there were other Dreamers at all.  No one to show her the undertow of the Fade, the dark stitches of thought and memory that wound everything together.

She'd been thirteen and fearless when she strayed too far, and lost her way, and tripped and found the face of Fraun.

She didn't see his face at first, of course.  She saw something many-limbed and scuttling, out _there_ , and _there_ was the ink-black streaky foothills in the Fade's center where she never dared tread.  But she'd never seen anything else tread there, either, not in all her time down here alone, and so, with a lonely greenhorn boldness, she followed.

And followed, and followed, picking her way across the shadowed moor.  She lost sight of the scuttling thing, many times, and never saw it straight on.  She saw it like a speck of dust in her eye, always sideways and blurry, and resisted the urge to blink the thing away; if she blinked, it disappeared again.

And before long it was following her, not the other way around.  She lost sight of it completely, and wasted precious seconds circling, looking over her shoulders, straining to find it again.  If she'd been a bit keener, maybe she would've seen how the fade-light flickered, just so slightly, as the thing scuttled close and spoke her name: "Miss Bellarous."

She whorled to see him—it—whatever the thing was.  How did you know my name? she wanted to ask, but her tongue had become heavy, or paralyzed, from the shock of finding him, maybe.  She still couldn't make out his form, though she was squinting, and he was very close now, so close she could almost touch him.  Or pet him, even, he seemed to be a black-furred thing—or a dark-scaled thing?  She looked at him sideways; straight-on made her eyes ache.  And she sideways-tried a few times to count the limbs, but it always came out between two and twelve, not counting the serpentine tail that swept low on the ground, and never the same number twice.  The creature's face glinted into view, then, with a shark-toothed grin, and all-too-human eyes.  It was the eyes that did it; she flinched and looked down.  She wanted to back away, but managed only a single halting step.

The thing spoke again: "Did Titus send you?  Foolish if he did."  And the thing was becoming less—or more—monstrous before her eyes.  She dared another glance and the fur had become magister's robes, the many-limbs had become simple hands.  It—he—smelled of bath-salts, smelled fresh.  His smile, though, was no less toothy.  He brushed a hand over her head: "Ah, I see."  And he forced his face just inches from hers: "Calista, truly?  Keeping a secret like _you_?  My, my."

The way he said _my, my_ made Brielle blanch.  Had she said that name aloud?  Calista's?  She retraced the past two minutes in her mind, though the process felt strangely tiring—she felt the dull ache of weary mind-muscles she'd never even known she had, because when had she ever struggled to _think_ ?  But she thought hard, and knew she had not said "Calista," knew she had no reason to mention Calista's name at all, hadn't even been _thinking_ it, so where had it come from?

Then she began to feel it—the dark prickling at the back of her mind—strumming the weave, she'd later call it, when she learned the trick herself.  But Fraun had no gentle lyrist's fingers.  With a wrench, the prickling turned to agony, and her last sane thought was, _must warn Calista—_

Then everything was run, runrunrun, Brielle wanted to run, just scream away as far as she could go—but she could no longer manage even a single halting step; her feet writhed and her toes squirmed but the center of her remained fixed, immovable, still.  Like a pinned insect.

He looked at her like one, brushing some hair from her face, stepping backward to admire his handiwork.  He—Fraun, she knew now, he wanted her to know his name—he grinned as he watched her fingers twitch vainly at her sides.  You shouldn't've have come here, he said in her mind, as though she needed him to tell her that.  As though she would ever need anyone to tell her that ever again.

* * *

Brielle thought of him now, as she stood at a dusty crossroads in the Fade.  Fraun had held her pinned, and he had let her go, and she'd never known why and never met him again.  But she had learned.  And now she carried pins and daggers of her own.

The Fade looked different, here.  Before Brielle stood a fence, and on the other side lie a great grassy field.

She had to sway Dorian, she told herself, for the hundredth time.  She had held him on a knife's edge, before, when she'd spoken to him in the dungeon.  She could feel it.  Just tilt the hilt a little and he'd fall into her hands, beg for her help.

The fence between herself and the field was thin, just a few chinked strands of wire stretched between two posts.  It wasn't like she was smashing or looting, she thought to herself, just giving a little nudge.  Plant an idea here, push a few inhibitions aside, that was all.  She could even manage it delicately, not like that monster Fraun.  It wasn't much different than being a persuasive sort to begin with, just—more direct.

This field was nothing like the shadowed moor near the Black City.  She'd tilted the scene a bit, to make it so.  (Idly she fingered a little prism in her right pocket—smooth, glass, solid.)  The light was clean and bright, and a few hens pecked around the battered fenceposts, and a distant hawk lazed its way across the sky.

But she fretted mute before the fence many minutes longer, pacing this way and that, until a flash of anger made her clench her fists, thinking: this is the only power left to me.  And the stab of shame she felt at that, was what at last pushed her over the wire.

She clambered over and nothing changed.  Not immediately.  The field was still green, the breeze mild.  But Brielle was feeling for the underneath, the underweave, the deep unseen path that would guide her way forward, to the mind that rested here.

After some shuffling, felt it— _there_ —warping just so slightly beneath her feet, like the feel of a blood vessel beneath one's fingers.  And she tread forward, carefully.  Not a sparrow falls without the Maker's blessing, and not a stray thought is crushed underfoot without the rest of the mind rippling and roiling with its consequence.

After each step she paused, long enough to let the squashed grass behind her rise again.  After some time, a staccato hum began to swell in the distance, at first dithering and indistinct, but then: cicadas, she thought, with a warm rush of familiarity.  And the sound carried more with it: hot summer nights in the Pillars, fireflies winking in the distance, glinting torchlights from little cabins across the mountainside.  The ground writhed and rippled softly beneath her, and that, too, was familiar.  She knew the slumbering fidgets of those old mountains, and the feel of rock breaking underfoot while wandering a ridgeside trail.

Before long, the roiling field gave way to gravel—Brielle wasn't sure when, and she'd been watching her steps the whole while.  But it became gravel, and then it was smooth stone, and then polished marble.  And then, that hum she'd been hearing transformed too, turning whispery and sharp—the sound, she realized, of so many snakes hissing.

She blinked, and where previously had been nothing were the snakes.  They lie in one great Gordian knot, a pile two stories tall and twice as wide, and growing wider by the second.  She could no longer see the horizon, so blotted it was with snakes.

She looked down.  She realized now that the writhing beneath her feet had not been mere rumbling earth, but snakes burrowing; now they erupted from the ground on all sides, and slithered toward that knotted mass.  The sun was angled just so, and all its light fell squarely on the spitting pile, and she could see nothing else.

Brielle was not afraid.  She looked a tiger-striped viper dead in the eye and waited to watch him blink.  The viper blinked, and then tilted his head as if to shrug, and wound his way back into the serpentine morass.

Brielle breathed in.  She was still unafraid.  But she had not done this thing in a long, long while.  She remembered Fraun very carefully: the curvature of his wrist, the hazy brightness of his eyes.  Mimed a few sleek motions with her hands.  And then she stepped forward.

She grabbed the first snake she could reach.  It pulled apart easily from its compatriots (always work a knot from the outside in), and, in touching it, she felt a pins-and-needles tingling, something foreign: hunger.  He was hungry.  Or had been hungry.  She wasn't sure of the ordering, yet.

She held it, and with her other hand, she peeled the next one out, a fierce fangless garter snake that hissed spittle at her.  She wrapped her fingers around it and stroked its head with just her thumb—the tingling sharpened, and she saw for a moment some mundane recollection, a woman drinking—his mother, she knew, without knowing how.  From childhood.

Brielle tossed them both aside.

She pried another snake out, then another, on and on.  Most of the _retinsa_ were slight things, because most things are slight: rain through a frosted window, a sip of wine, some banality exchanged with a stranger, sore feet, snacking on stale bread, waiting in line, swatting a fly, an itchy nose, nodding off in a lecture.

His mother, again.  Drinking, again.  Brielle frowned, and pressed on.  That sharp prickling in her head was growing thicker, darker, filling her throat.  Maybe Fraun had a trick for keeping this back—this choking blackness, this smoke-in-her-lungs—but all she knew to do was move, move faster, get out faster.

She pulled another _retinsa_ loose, some languorous black-scaled thing.  She touched, and felt a whisper, chanted words, an incantation muttered in some high-ceilinged room.  She shuddered, she pressed forward, she quickened.  She was getting close.  The serpents were growing thicker, more solid, and she only needed to twist one little thought—

Then the back of her hand grazed a snake that was hot to the touch.

Hot, then sizzling, then scalding—and clasped around her wrist like a leech.  A surge of feeling flooded her mind, and the rush of it, the headiness of it, was like whiskey poured straight down her throat.  She was choking but she couldn't step away, or step out, the sensation was so strong.  The other man's skin was hot and so wonderfully soft to touch—there was another man—and she didn't know what this was, there was only _feel_.  It was dark, she couldn't see because it was dark, the candles scorched, and even the servants sent away, and a scent like—she thought it was cologne, then she thought it was possum, then just sweat—he lurched beneath him—

And then she cried out.  It wasn't fear she felt, but something kin to it.  Everything was too _close_.  Blindly, she shoved against the tangled, serpentine wall, but her left hand grazed against a memory of a broken bone, and the moment of cracking was so sharp that she cried out again.  In her mind she heard Fraun's black panther laugh.

Around her, ten thousand scaled sentries shifted, with now-unblinking eyes.  A tiger-striped cobra lifted its great head and spat.  Maker.  They were on her, now; the one clasped around her arm was joined by five others.  Then there was not one, but a dozen tiger-stripped cobras spitting, and then she felt the piercing burn of a dozen fangs in a row on her right side.  Brielle swore, and fumbled, and with her free hand she managed a desperate twist of the prism in her pocket—

When she opened her eyes again, she was back in the dirt, lying in the road on the wrong side of that little wire fence.  The light was clean and bright, and a few hens pecked around the battered fenceposts, and a distant hawk lazed its way across the sky.  There were no snakes in sight.

Right back where she'd started.

Stupid, stupid.  Scowling, she lifted the prism in her hand and twisted it.  She didn't need to do it this way, she thought in an abashed fury.  Hang this mind-traipsing and hang Fraun's tricks.

No sooner had she thought, _I'll just talk to him myself_ , then her hand twitched the little prism unconsciously, and the field began to dissipate like fog in midmorning sun.  It lingered for only a few shimmering seconds longer, before it yielded once more to darkness: a dark, sleek-walled antechamber in the Fade.  Then she blinked away the last lingering bits of sundew, and there he stood: Dorian.  Alone.

He didn't see her.  Of course he didn't.  She'd cloaked herself well, before coming here.  He wouldn't see her until she wanted him to.

Which she did, now.  She breathed his name: "Dorian."

He turned and they saw each other.

I should kill him, Brielle thought, unbidden, but with such force that her hand wrenched, and the prism in her hand transmogrified, becoming a Fade-tipped blackened blade.  I should kill him, she thought again, this time with teeth bared.  Just as she'd practiced so many nights.  And after so many nights of tracking him here, it was a reflex, how could she _not_ think of it? she finally had him—

No, that wasn't what she'd come here to do—

But what if Dorian _knew_? what she'd seen, what she'd tried to do?  He'd never let her live—she wouldn't, if she were him—it was insanity to trust someone who would turn your own thoughts against you, make your own mind suspect.  She thought of Fraun.  She was staring back into Dorian's silent, still eyes, so fervently she could count his every blink, so fervently she could see the faint twitching of his pupils.  After long minutes she realized what she was searching for in those eyes: a reason to not do it, to not do this thing she'd hauled across a continent and over a mountain range to do, to not do the only sure and unselfish thing left to her.  

And that's when she swallowed a small, wincing cry, and put the blade away, because if she was looking for excuses then she knew she'd damn well find one, and she might as well relent now, before she twisted her own thoughts eight different ways, and made her _own_ mind suspect.  She knew she wouldn't kill him.  That was enough.

Dorian saw it.  When she decided not to kill him.  It was not a quick thing, but a slow shuttering: every twitch of her jaw like the groan of a withered wooden house in the wind, shingles rattling, floorboards screeching.  He held still, bracing—until it at last collapsed inward on itself, and the brightness in her eyes dimmed, and he knew she would not kill him.  For a moment she seemed faint, unsteady on her feet.  Some other fierce thing rose to take its place, sharpening her eyes again—but that new thing not murder.  So Dorian let himself breathe, and let his hands rest at his sides.

Brielle pocketed her knife.  "I need an answer," she announced, imperious, and licked her lips.

Dorian didn't speak.

That irritated her, more than any of his little taunts or witticisms ever had.  When had this man _ever_ been mute?  "Yes or no, Dorian?  It's not a complicated question."

"I ought to be getting back to Tevinter, you know," he said, looking past her, "not dithering about here.  I've been saying that for a while."

"That's not an answer, Dorian," she said, with a _tsk_.  "You want to say no, then you tell me no."

Now Dorian looked at her, but only sidelong, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.  "You're sure?  That this can be done?"

"I've said as much.  The only mind at question here is yours."

"Right, right."  Andraste's sake, she thought, just look me in the eye—and the next second he did, to her surprise, grinning as his eyes suddenly brightened.  "Yes, then," he said.  "Of course.  Show me how to Dream."

Brielle felt a laugh bubble in her chest, a laugh of sheer relief—but she swallowed it down before it burst out.  "So: I teach you, and you set me free.  Agreed?"

"Ah, well, we'll see about that."

His tone was breezy.  His grin was flawless.  Brielle wanted to punch it.  "That's not how this works, Dorian.  No agreement, no Dreaming.  Are you saying no after all?"

Dorian gave a little nasal laugh, the kind she hated; it sounded like he was twelve, and twelve-year-old Dorian had been a bratty hellion.  She felt her jaw twitch, despite her best effort, and forced her expression into something like placidity.

Apparently the result was ridiculous; Dorian looked at her and laughed again.  "Ah, come off it, Brielle.  I only meant, what sort of promise can I give you? that you'd believe?  And as far as I'm aware you haven't a great many other options.  You said you could teach; teach me, and then we'll see."

Brielle felt her jaw twitch again.  In the space of a few bare seconds, all the following ran through her mind:

That Dorian had a point, even if he was being insufferable about it: she bargained not just from a place of weakness, but from _powerlessness_.  He'd been entranced enough by the Dream to forget that, for a moment—when she first spoke of the Fade—but only for a moment.

That they each had daggers pointed at the other's throat, but she could not kill him without getting killed herself, whereas he could kill with no consequence at all.

That she had come to Skyhold fully prepared to kill, and to be killed, if need be.  But she had not killed Dorian, and she had not been killed.  And somewhere between her desperate magefire attempt and now, she had lost the—the thing.  The nerve, the cold clarity in her mind, the stiff and simple drive that drove her daggers toward Dorian's chest.  It was gone, and it had been replaced by some squeamish thing in the pit of her, and she abhorred it but she had not managed to will it away.

That Dorian had forgotten, for a moment, the absolute power he held over her, but that Leliana never had.  Even now Leliana held her.  What was her play?

That the kind of magic that _could_ bind Dorian to his word—that could offer consequences more grisly than death—she had only the murkiest idea about, for lack of practice—though Dorian probably had the appropriate practice, she thought grimly—but like hell she would submit herself to blood magic, like hell she'd let Dorian wrap her in any spell she didn't understand herself, like hell she'd bind herself in any way to this man.

That she could bully him into a promise, probably—make him swear by Andraste, by every Old God she could name—and he'd swear it, but he'd laugh, too.  At best he'd tactfully bite his tongue until he left, and laugh then.  Laughing at her girlish impotent fury.  And what magister's son ever gave two shits about Andraste's name, anyway?

And one last thing: she could go into his mind again.  Swallow the bile and just _do_ it, properly.  But only if she had to.

And those few seconds passed, and Brielle knew she couldn't win this, couldn't persuade him, not as she was.  But maybe as she _could_ be.

She imagined what Dorian might like to see: breezy, misplaced self-assurance.  She smiled wryly at the realization.  In dealing with a magister's son, perhaps she must become magisterlike herself.

"How about I make the first promise?" she offered, voice husky.  Dorian arched an eyebrow.  "We have, what did Leliana say, two weeks?  Not much time.  But time enough.  So I'll promise you this: in two weeks I'll have you walking the Fade under your own power.  And you'll be able to shape it, and shape yourself within it—some, enough, enough to be satisfied.  You'll see."

"And minds?"  Dorian had that look on his face again, the one he'd had when she'd first described what the Dream was—shoulders relaxed, eyes hungry.

"Certainly," she said, magnanimous, with a lazy smile.  (This is madness, madness! something shrieked in the back of her mind.)  "But in return you'll swear that you'll work as hard as you have ever before in your life.  Harder.  Waste of my time otherwise."

"Of course," Dorian said, automatic.

"And if I teach you all that—and only then—I walk free from Skyhold."

Dorian was silent for a second, two—but then nodded mutely.  It would be awkward to do otherwise.

Then they were staring at each other again, and both their smiles faded, and something like vertigo struck her—so sudden it nearly knocked her over.  She felt her knees wobble beneath her, and she was horrified to think Dorian might notice, but his expression remained pleasantly placid.  Good.  Because she'd just promised Dorian Pavus some things that had taken her years to learn.  Now they had two weeks.  And she hadn't the faintest inkling whether he even _could_ be taught, or taught fast enough, and on top of all that she'd best be charming and personable and probably as much like Alexius as possible, if she could wrangle that, transfigure herself into something Dorian might respect enough to let free—

Brielle breathed in deep, though there was no need for breath, in the Fade.  "Right, then."  She lifted a hand to rake it through her hair.  Halfway through the gesture she realized that that may be a nervous tic.  So instead did a showy sort of hand gesture: "We're here already.  So, let's begin."

* * *

But soon as she said that, something lurched: a tear in the fade, a swell in the river.  She felt her foot catch in the stones underneath, and her ears filled with a blurry roar, and from every angle a bruising current surged to hammer her flat.  She writhed and strained to pull her foot free; useless, and she no longer heard the roar but felt it, the current, the Fade, the whatever-it-was all around her.  She gasped for breath and her lungs spasmed in reply, the saltwater burning her insides as it filled her—

—and then she woke.

She woke, gasping, and it was dark.  It was dark, and she lie on a cold cell floor, or she was thrown ashore maybe, shuddering piteously, and it took her nearly a minute before she noticed she was lying sideways in a pile of vomit and spittle and something that smelled distinctly of salt.  The spasming of her chest had not stopped, that was real, that was here.  She shuddered and shuddered until she was drenched in sweat, and in some delirious madness she shouted out Samson's name, but even he seemed to be asleep at this wretched hour.  She kept sweating; she was freezing; she brought her arm to her face and bit into it hard to keep from crying out again.  It was so much all at once—trapper and trapped, the warm and the cold, fields and Fades, her and Dorian—and every breath made her lungs burn with fresh agony.

She didn't stop biting down until she tasted a wisp of her own blood.

She lie there for hours, or what felt like hours, straining now and again to lift her head off the ground, and faltering each time.  And when she did finally manage that much, that pitiful amount, of _course_ that was when Leliana arrived.

Leliana herself, not the guards.  Maybe the spymaster had known her state—Brielle tried magic, of course, tried this scarce chance to knock _her_ about for a change—but the effort of it yielded no more than a spark, and nearly made her retch again.  Leliana smirked, then bound Brielle's hands and dragged her back to that dark place.

What she said, what was asked: Brielle only had the faintest impression of these afterwards, like trying to discern some single smoky tendril in a wildfire.  But a few times Leliana grabbed her by the chin and yanked her forward and said "listen to what I am saying" in a voice so low and black that Brielle flinched, anticipating the knife-in-the-dark that never came.  There was a new feverishness in Leliana's eyes, in those moments, and dimly Brielle wondered if the questions wasn't for her, but for something _past_ her, beyond her, some sideways way of gleaning a truth that Brielle herself didn't know she knew.  Like Fraun, maybe, but without magic.  Or like a shaman lighting a fire to read the smoke.  She heard a raven exhale, with a slow croaking rattle.  A pattering like talons, or rain, all around her.

She missed the rain, she realized, achingly.  And when she was at last dragged back to her cell for the last hour of the night, she hadn't even the strength to dream of that.

* * *

One moment, Brielle had agreed to teach him, and the next, she'd disappeared into some shimmering whorl.  One-two-three gone like that.  Dorian frowned.  Was it something he'd said? or something in his teeth?

He found her the next morning, sitting prim and upright in the center of her cell.  She was trying what she might've imagined was an imperious pose—chin tilted upward, lips thin.  On his mother, that very same posture had always looked severe, but Brielle was too scraggly-haired and awkwardly-limbed to seem the same.

And ill-washed, and sitting in a cell.  That didn't help.

Dorian grinned wolfishly.  "Running out on me before we even got to the main course, eh, Brielle?  Not the first time that's happened to me, mind, but a regrettable loss on your part."

He spoke in Tevene, of course.  There were ears about, and they were well and truly conspiring by now.

She didn't rise to the banter, just cast him a cool sidelong look without turning her head.  "In the satchel I brought with me," she said.  "If you look in one of the inside pockets, there's a small green pouch.  If I'm teaching you, I need that."

"Ah, contraband, how delightful.  What is it that I'm ferrying?  Do I get a take?  Does this make me an accessory to a crime, or the perpetrator?  I'd much rather be the latter, you see, all else being equal."

Brielle smiled wryly.  "It's nothing so flashy as that.  Just some dried herbs.  I imagine you can can slip it in beneath some of my food easily enough."

Dorian frowned.  "Are there herbs that induce Dreaming?"

Brielle's face faltered, for a second.  "Not Dreaming.  Just sleep."

There was only one thing that could be: "Dormesi?"

She was staring at a crack in the ceiling with forced indifference.  "You do want me to teach you, yes?"

Dorian sucked in a breath through his teeth.  "I suppose I don't need to warn you about the psychosis, the convulsions, the nausea and all the other unpleasantness if you keep up that—"

"No more than I need to warn you about your drinking habit, no," she said, in a flat voice that brooked no further argument.

Not a reasonable comparison at all.  Alcoholism was the respectable addiction of all Tevinter nobility, just as essential as witty repartees and tight-lipped servants, for enduring all their bourgeois burdens.  But _dormesi_ was the smell of passed-out whores and elves lying in the Minrathous gutters, pale and shivering in their sleep, to be swept away the next morning—or swept in with the rest of the rubbish.

But Brielle was giving him a sharp glare that made him feel twelve years old again.  It wasn't that she'd convinced him this was a _good_ idea.  It was that it would feel prudish to argue, with her looking at him like that, and Maker preserve him, he may be a miscreant but he would _not_ be a prude.

So he asked only, "Does Leliana know?"

Before Brielle could answer, though, a tremendous _clang_ at the top of the stairwell made both of them jump.  (Conspiring, conspiring.  No one here speaks Tevene, Dorian reminded himself.)  And not five seconds later, there was Andraste's Golden Boy himself, Cullen Rutherford, in honest-to-goodness shining armor, with a pair of guards to match, following closely behind him.

"Hullo, Cullen," Dorian ventured.

Cullen gave a stiff nod and kept walking.  Dorian muffled his own little gasp of relief.  The nodding and moving along—that was good, very good.  That meant the man was distracted with some other affair, rather than angry at Dorian in particular—which, given their recent encounters, was quite the lucky stroke.  It was hard for the mage not to be jumpy when he was, in fact, literally sneaking around behind the commander's back.

Trying to be furtive, he turned back to Brielle, but kept still, and watched Cullen out of the corner of his eyes as the man halted in front of Samson's cell.

Samson stirred at the arrival: "Commander."  He rasped as though he hadn't drunk water in a week.  "Thought you'd forgotten all about me, what a surprise."

"There's been a case of lyrium poisoning among some of our men," Cullen announced, brisk, as one of the guards beside him fiddled with a ring of keys.  "Unfortunately, you are our expert on that matter.  Come with me, you'll be helping them."

The guard stepped forward to turn the lock, but Samson kicked the cell-bars hard, startling the man backwards with a ferocious rattle.  Samson's eyes never left the commander, his shoulders hunched and surly.  "I ain't a miracle-worker, Cullen.  Best thing for 'em is likely rest and the Maker's good grace."

Cullen eyes flashed murder.  Dorian tensed, the way one does in those perilous seconds before a barfight erupts, ready to break the thing up—because, by the Maker, Samson may be a wretch but you couldn't just pulverize him in his own cell.

But Cullen said nothing else, hardly moved at all.  He jerked his head at the guard, and the guard tried the lock again, and this time he didn't flinch when Samson kicked.  Another guard joined to open the door, and to clasp some irons around the old templar's wrists, all while Cullen stood still.  If he never laid a finger on Samson to begin with, he'd never be able to pulverize him—perhaps this was the commander resisting temptation.  For the hundredth time Dorian wondered why the Inquisitor had let Samson live as Cullen's charge—surely it was more a punishment for Cullen, to see a man he so obviously hated kept alive.  (Maybe that was the point, Dorian thought darkly.  Had Cullen wronged the Inquisitor?)

Then they started dragging Samson down the hall, and Brielle sat still like a rabbit, eyes straining, the hair on her neck trembling at every sound.  She heard them coming down the aisle; she was certain she recognized which footsteps belonged to him.  She had never seen Raleigh Samson, not once, in all her time down here.  But now, now.  First came Cullen, then a guard, and then:

He looked like a thing seared, or flayed, though in reality he was neither—just haggard.  His hairline was receding and his hair, backswept and patchy.  His skin all over had the uncomfortable red tinge of a scab peeled away too soon, and all the bony angles of his frame seemed tense with warning—like an alley-cat with its back arched in a hiss.

Anyone other than Brielle—or maybe just anyone who hadn't been locked underground for the past two weeks—would have recoiled at the sight.  But a small, mad part of Brielle's mind had still been wondering, all this time, whether Samson was just a delusion, a ghost she'd dreamt, a hallucination, and while the man was grotesque, he was very, very real.  More real than Dorian, even, who was cloaked by his coiffed hair and self-effacing snark.  More real than Leliana, who traded in secrets and spoke only in darkness.

She stared at him, and he was real.  He met her eyes and stared back, eyes furiously bright.  Maybe he had been wondering if she was real, too.

She _felt_ very real—his gaze made her real—more real than she had been in a long while.  His pupils seemed to tremble a bit in the unsteady light, or maybe all eyes did that and she hadn't noticed before.  A few scrapes and scraggles were all he had for a beard.  Beneath the redness, his skin was tinged very slightly yellow.  His fingernails, too.  The guard behind him prodded him with the hilt of his sword, but Samson didn't budge.

Dorian didn't look at the man at all.  Didn't want to risk accidentally meeting Cullen's eyes.  They were conspiring, after all.

At last the guard's prodding became too vigorous to ignore.  Samson whipped his head around like a roused dragon, teeth bared, and then laughed to see how the guard flinched.  Then he faced forward once more and strode with bold, mocking steps, until the whole party disappeared from view.

As soon as they were up the stairs and out of the way, Dorian sighed, and focused again on Brielle: "Does Leliana know about the dormesi?"

Brielle didn't answer at first, still staring after where Samson had been.  Dorian snapped an impatient finger and repeated the question.

"Is there anything that Leliana _doesn't_ know?" Brielle said, in a tone that rather suggested Dorian was an idiot.  She was still looking past him.  "Dorian, how long has he been down here?"

It took Dorian a second to realize she meant Samson.  "That old templar?  A while.  Since before Corypheus's defeat, so, ah, months?"  He regarded her with some puzzlement—he hadn't noticed until now, but she looked a little flushed, maybe feverish.  They _were_ feeding her properly down here, weren't they?

Dorian went on: "He does look a bit bedraggled, I'll grant.  But he was always ugly, so don't pin that on us, eh?"

It was a joke, of course, just a joke, but Brielle turned sharply toward Dorian and scowled, and now she really _did_ look like his mother, all scorn and stiffness.  "Just get me the dormesi, Dorian," she said, waving her hand to dismiss him, and Dorian was surprised as anyone when he went straight off and did as she asked.


End file.
